Goddamn Teenagers (Worm, AU/time travel)

[dc2008]

"I'm not snooping in your brother's room," Taylor said firmly. "That's creepy."

Aisha laughed. "Come on, how else we gonna know what he likes?"

Taylor rolled her eyes. "He's your brother, you won't convince me you are not already very well informed about his activities."

Aisha snorted. "Less than you think, he be real good at hiding shit."

Taylor pinched her nose. "Or he doesn't keep it here, what with the inquisitive younger sister, mischievous neighbors, and constant PRT presence."

"Yeah, yeah," Aisha said, "don't shit where you eat. But that still doesn't help me!"

Taylor sighed. "Big picture, it tells you something important, that he's not going to cut loose around you. Find a way to get him in a situation where he feels like he doesn't have to worry about you, where he can do something he likes."

---

Note: This is why I try to re-read the last couple weeks of post regularly, is so I don't forget plot threads. Like I almost forgot this one.

 

[dc2008]

"You say your parents were weird," Lisa finally interrupted. As nice as it was for the younger girl to babble nonsense while Lisa had a proper panic, now that Lisa was ready to engage, attempting to parse the motormouth was exhausting. "Weird in what way?"

"Uh, well," the pint-sized powerhouse said, "they still act normal when I'm not in the room. I can hear them. But when I'm in the room, they act all," she shrugged, "weird."

Useless, of course. Lisa tried again. "How are they being different than normal?"

"They're being much more polite and nice to each other? And aren't as snippy? Sometimes one of them will start to be snippy, and the other will give them a look, and then they'll both get quiet, and then one will change the subject?"

Troubled family life. Dr. Weaver trying to help.

Lisa groaned, and resisted the urge to put her head on the table. "Well," she said finally, in response to the younger girl''s alarmed expression, "the good news is that she really was trying to help."

---

Note: Oh, Lisa.

 

[dc2008]

"The Empire capes have splintered," Dr. Weaver began.

Emily blinked. That neatly explained why she had requested that a broader audience for this meeting, with Phil, Armsmaster, Dauntless and Miss Militia also in attendance.

The following explanation was… well, to be honest, in keeping with what she had come to expect from the woman.

"To recap," Dauntless said, checking his notes. Poor boy seemed overwhelmed, but then again Emily supposed he had been mostly insulated from Dr. Weaver's particular style of briefing.

"Hookwolf, Stormtiger, and Cricket, together with some non-capes, are heading to South America to work for that junta that's been in the news, the Elite recruited Othala with Victor as a tag-along, and we don't know what happened to Crusader, but he's gone."

Dr. Weaver nodded.

Shawn visibly tried to pull himself together. "Aren't we worried about what they're going to do wherever they're going, not to mention what they might do along the way?"

Emily cut in, before Dr. Weaver could answer. Dauntless didn't usually have such a clear view of how the sausage got made, and there was no sense in unnecessarily provoking the boy.

---

Note: Alternately, "Someone Else's Problem" or "Making Bratwurst"

 

[dc2008]

"Brian being boring and responsible makes sense. Don't see that changing though unless he or me go on a trip somewhere." Aisha said slowly. "But travel and hotels and shit cost money?"

Taylor searched deep in her memory. "Mom used to have these, uh, trainings and meetings and stuff for work? Does the PRT have that?"

"A what now?"

Taylor is wiggled her fingers indecisively. "It was a thing? Mom would go to a place, with lots of other people who did what she did, and work would put her up in a shitty hotel? She would do classes and presentations and work stuff during the day and then at night go out with all her friends from other places who had also got their work to send them?"

Aisha blinked. "Is that normal? For work to do?"

Taylor shrugged. "I don't know? Dad doesn't do it, but maybe the PRT does? They have bases everywhere, so guest rooms and stuff? Maybe there are classes and stuff that don't get taught much in the Bay he could go take somewhere else?"

---

Note:
Considering Annette was in her younger days, hmmm, politically active, and I doubt she was the only such person to go into academia, I wonder what kind of mischief she got up to at conferences?

I also love the idea of Aisha and Taylor sitting there trying to figure out what this "work trip" is, like a couple of anthropologists reconstructing historical events from half-remembered oral tradition…

 

[dc2008]

"So," Lisa asked, "you never told us what your doctorate is in?" She, Aisha and Dr. Weaver were having brunch after the younger girls' morning exercise.

The older woman shrugged. "Technically, I have two, English and Parahuman Studies. Well, and a bunch of honorary ones."

Lisa blinked. She wasn't expecting that, although to be fair she wasn't sure what she'd been expecting.

"Oh, come on," Aisha said. "You can't leave us hanging! Story time!"

Dr. Weaver sighed. "I didn't set out to get any of them. Parahuman Studies was first, eventually older!you and some people at, hmm, call it PRT 2.0, badgered me into it. I'd been writing articles and teaching on an ad hoc basis for years, but we kept running into assholes from alternates who insisted that their one treatise and a fancy title meant they could ignore me."

"Then a few years later older!you," the older woman nodded to Lisa, "as a gift endowed an English department at a new university on Gimel, named in honor of my mother. They awarded me a doctorate and made me honorary chair. At first I was ambivalent, it felt like cheating. Then older!Lisa showed me how she'd taken a bunch of these Tolkien articles I'd written for fun and packaged them up. Apparently people were impressed."

"Tolkien articles?" Lisa asked.

"Sure, many of the alternates we contacted either had his works or a close analogue. As a hobby I had been writing scholarly analyses comparing and contrasting them across alternates."

Aisha laughed. "Let me get this straight. You accidentallied two super-advanced degrees, for fun, while living in the apocalypse?"

---

Note: Oh, the honorary degrees were what my versions of you two thought of as gag gifts.

 

[dc2008]

Previously

"… then Kaiser said—" the man began.

"Fuck Kaiser," Alabaster interrupted. His men nodded. "He got us in this mess. No, we're getting out, but we're gonna do one last job on the way. Show them what the Empire is made of!"

Now

Rachel looked up sharply. Angelica was in her lap, Wafa and the night's student were playing cards after dinner. Things were quiet.

"Something's wrong," she said.

The student asked questions.

"Can't feel Angelica, power's not working," Rachel said, getting up. Angelica followed her as she headed toward the back door.

"Where are you going?" Wafa asked. "We should go downstairs to the safe room."

The student was making concerned noises about his phone not working.

"Seeing to the dogs," Rachel said, as she shrugged on her fancy armored vest. "And getting a shovel."

As she walked out, she disconnected the generator. The lights went out, which only confirmed what she already knew. Somebody wanted to play games.

Elsewhere

"There go the lights," the man said to Alabaster. "Power's out, and with that Toybox thing only you have powers."

"Let's go," said the parahuman. "It's just one girl. This should be quick."

---

Note: Yep, just one unpowered girl, at her own farm, at night, with no artificial light but what you're carrying.

 

[dc2008]

"Boss, there's no one here."

Alabaster swore. "Keep looking." This was supposed to be easy, it was one girl! But the house was empty, everything was too dark, there were too many sheds and shit, and people kept tripping on shit.

"Uh, Boss?"

"What."

"Where's Johnson?"

Motherfucker. "Regroup at the cars."

A few minutes later

Alabaster stared at the cars.

"Yeah, I don't think we're leaving in those," someone unhelpfully said, and they weren't wrong. The tires were slashed. Something smeared on the windshields and lights. Worst of all, the gas caps were off, with unmarked empty containers discarded nearby. Alabaster wasn't a car guy, but he sure as shit wasn't going to be starting either of these with who knew what in the tank.

Elsewhere

"Piggot." Emily said, picking up the phone. She had been enjoying that rarest of luxuries, a quiet evening at home.

"Canary alert for the Lindt farm. Called, no answer, no signal. We're going to full alert, as per SOP."

Emily sighed. "Confirmed, full recall, full mobilization, safety check on all families and dependents. Send a car. And someone brief Dr. Weaver." She wasn't a fan of Ms. Lindt, never had been, but the woman was one of hers now.

---

Note: Remember, boys and girls, it's not an "evil villainous lair", it's the home of an unmasked, non-combatant Ward.

 

[dc2008]

"Boss," a voice sounded out into the night.

Alabaster winced, but an over-looked downside of the tinkertech broad-spectrum jammer they'd brought was that, well... it was a broad-spectrum jammer. Yes, it blocked their enemy's comms, because it blocked all comms. However, it wasn't until he was out here, in the dark, that Alabaster really apprecaited that mean it would block his comms too.

Maybe there was a reason this stuff had just been sitting unused in the back of that stash house.

"Boss?"

"Over here!" Alabaster finally replied. He could hear the sound of boots hitting the ground as someone approached. Murray from the sound of it.

"I found Johns--" Murray's voice began, right before a loud clattering noise erupted, followed immediately by the sound of a person hitting the ground.

Alabaster approached. "You OK, man?"

"Yeah," Murray said, getting up. "Landed right in a pile of dog shit though, Christ. Anyway, we found Johnson, he's unconscious in the back of that barn over there. Got locked in some kind of cage."

Alabaster resisted the urge to scream. What was supposed to be a quick in-and-out was becoming significantly more complicated.

"Here's what we're going to do. Here are the car keys. There are bolt-cutters in the trunk of car 2. Get them and then meet me over at the barn. We'll figure this out."

"Sure thing, boss," Murray said, heading toward the cars.

10 minutes later

"Murray," Alabaster said, approaching the cars, "where the fuck are you? I've been over there waiting forever--oomph."

Picking himself up, Alabaster turned to see what he'd tripped on now. Fumbling with his phone, he turned on the light to find Murray, face-down and bleeding from a head wound. A quick search revealed that his gear was gone, his pockets were empty, and even his shoelaces were cut. Struck by a sudden premonition, Alabaster approached the cars slowly. The trunk was open, although he could tell the interior lights had been shut off, and as he shone the light in, furry blobs zipped out of his cone of vision. Examining more closely, he found some sort of animal feed had been tossed into the cab, the spare tire was slashed, and the toolkit gone.

 

[dc2008]

A single gunshot split the air, followed by the chatter of return fire, then screams. Finally.

Shortly Thereafter

Alabaster was shot, for the first time that evening, as he rounded the corner of the farmhouse.

"Motherfucker!" Alabaster said, as he reset.

"Sorry, boss," a voice said from the darkness.

It took Alabaster longer than he was comfortable with to regain control of the situation. While Benoit, Cohen and O'Neill were all adamant that they didn't fire first, they'd somehow all wound up shooting each other in the darkness. None were in danger of bleeding out, but they weren't going to be good for anything else.

It took him longer than it should have to realize that he was the only one who had responded to the shootout. Garcia and Klein were missing, leaving him as the only one left conscious, accounted for, and uninjured.

---

Note: Not gonna lie, had fun with the names. European fascism was a truly cross-cultural affair, and the tent has only gotten bigger with time.

 

[dc2008]

Alabaster frantically rooted through the kitchen drawers.

The entire operation had been a disaster, half his men were down, none dead thank god, and the other half were entirely missing. He'd given up on the girl or the PRT, now he just wanted out. Preferably with at least some of his men.

He wasn't Kreig, he could learn, and it was pretty goddamn clear that wandering off through the countryside was only ending one way. He needed some fucking wheels. While his cars were fucked, that girl had a truck right there, if he could only find the goddamn keys.

Finding nothing but kitchen shit, Alabaster ripped out the drawer in frustration and threw it across the room. Fuck it. There was a shed. There were too many sheds, one of them would have a toolkit. He'd just hot wire the damn thing.

He took one last look around, but no keys appeared. After kicking the fridge a few times and flipping the table, he opened the freezer and stomped out the door.

As he re-entered the yard, he stepped on a piece of dog shit because of course he did, not a dog to be seen but shit was still appearing everywhere. Bending down to scrape off his shoe, he stood up sharply at a sudden movement, only to see a dark shape rapidly approaching his head.

---

Note: Alternate titles for this sequence: Country Girls Have More Fun, Doing It Country Style, An American Welcome, An American Farm, This One Time At Dog Camp.

Also Note: Forgotten, Forsaken is updating! Very different tone than this (cw: sad/feels/hope), but yay! Knowledge of the other side of the cross is not needed and if anything discouraged—I was sad to find out how much of the world-building was original to the fic and not innate to the setting. Forgotten, Forsaken (Post Canon Worm/Kantai Collection)