- Pronouns
- She/They
They are made out of the standard crystalline pseudoflesh, yes. However I think you're working from a partially inaccurate premise- Vicky is no longer just a parahuman.
Incense and Powdered Diamond
- Thread starter Lucifra
- Start date
Skirmishers and Siege Engines
- Pronouns
- She/They
Topple a mage's tower, then watch them flee…
"Taylor!" She turned just in time to catch Victoria coming in for what would have been a bone-rattling hug on a normal person (or even some Brutes). "I thought- When you just took that blast-"
"I'm here, Vicky," said Taylor quietly, wrapping her arms around her girlfriend and squeezing gently, raising a barrier around them to prevent the Magician from hitting them while they were vulnerable. "It's gonna take more than some grimderp Living Tribunal knockoff to put me out."
Vicky blinked. "What?"
Taylor opened her mouth to respond, then stopped when she realized she had nothing she could say to explain the non sequitur she'd just dropped. "Never mind. How are things going up here?"
Vicky winced. "Not great. Aunt Sarah caught the edge of that blast that hit you, and she'll survive but she's lost a leg and she's out of the fight. She's lucky, though, we're having trouble keeping up with the use of both Myrddin's power and Damsel's, and it doesn't help that she's whittling us down."
"Let's see what we can't do about that."
Vicky gave Taylor a level look. "Strong words- you sure you can back them up?"
Taylor wasn't sure where, exactly, she was remembering the line from, but it seemed almost perfect for the situation. "Although only breath, words which I command are immortal." Then, more quietly: "I'm sure."
Vicky blinked twice before blushing. "Go get 'em, tiger."
The shield vanished, and immediately the two of them separated, letting one of Damsel's energy blasts scream its way between them as they both returned their focus to the Endbringer whose non-ruined faces were both gazing at them.
"You know," said Victoria, shouting somewhat to be heard over the distance, "she's not all that much taller than you are!"
"Size matters not," Taylor returned, flicking out another lightning bolt that vanished into an infinitesimal rift between dimensions mere feet away from its blonde head. "Besides," she continued, changing tacks away from direct damage towards area control and conjuring a pair of flickering runes, hagalaz and raido, above her left arm, "she's too edgy. Take off the damn hoods!" This last part was shouted at the Magician, who was at that moment flying through a particularly low-hanging cloud.
It gestured towards Taylor with one hand, and with a crack of displaced air, she was swatted leftwards, managing to stop herself just shy of a screaming cone of wrongness.
Taylor shot directly up and went to click the button on her armband. Hitting nothing but air, the fact that it hadn't stood up to the Endbringer's attack registered to her, and in a quick flicker of wunjo, a new one appeared, secured to her arm in just the same place as her old one.
After wasting precious time re-setting it up, Taylor jammed both buttons down. "Hard Override: anyone in the air, I'm trying something that might be able to disrupt its ability to reach out and touch us. Watch out for turbulence- I might not quite be able to keep the air calm as I do so."
With that said, she pushed her will through the runes, sending them blazing to life. As if in response, the Magician turned to glare at her, but it was too late to do anything, as the wispy clouds it had flown through moments before seemed to explode outwards, turning into stormclouds crackling with lightning as they wrapped themselves around the Endbringer.
The Magician wrenched one of its arms free to point at Taylor, but a bolt of lightning connected from the bindings around its waist to the outstretched limb, battering it aside with the force of a particularly disgruntled deity and sending the attack it had prepared screaming off into emptier skies.
At the same time, the winds around the Endbringer were picking up, giving the less adroit flyers nearby more trouble as they howled around the Endbringer and made its flight unpredictable at best, battering it around like a particularly energetic six year old with a stick would a piñata: with much vigor and enthusiasm, but less lasting damage.
This did, however, let the other flyers take a moment to regroup, with Legend and Eidolon finally appearing (one as a streak of actinic blue-white light and the other fading into view from within a cloud of green sparkles almost but not quite identical to a tube of glitter glue).
They took a moment to coordinate with other flying Blasters before firing, all kinds of attacks both conventional and esoteric converging on the Endbringer. Some of them were captured within small distortions of space that, given what she knew of parahuman powers, were likely a result of Myrddin being able to connect to other universes, but the vast majority impacted the Endbringer to greater or lesser extent. Some, like Laserdream's, only left what appeared to be scorch marks, but others cracked or pierced the Endbringer's flowing robes, like a not-quite-crossbow bolt that rose from ground level (probably Flechette's, thought Taylor, seeing how it penetrated through and through, ascending towards Mani's sister as if the Endbringer wasn't even there) or a beam of those same greenish sparkles that Eidolon appeared in.
Unfortunately, while the concentrated onslaught couldn't slay the Endbringer, it did quite the number on the not-quite-solid shackles of clouds Taylor had wrapped the Endbringer in.
It seized the opportunity, releasing what amounted to essentially an expanding sphere of screaming not-space, and Taylor was forced to abandon the runes she already had running in order to conjure enough defensive barriers to stop the wave from killing anyone with the power she had available.
While Taylor was distracted, it repositioned, a visible glow manifesting around its three remaining hands, before a massive explosion from below gave them all pause. Looking down, the most noticeable thing was the fact that the massive form of the Tower was toppling over, massive chunks blown out of it.
Taylor snapped her attention back to the Magician, cursing herself for her lack of situational awareness, but she needn't have bothered- it was hurtling away into the skies at a speed far in excess of anything Myrddin had ever been documented using.
With one Endbringer fleeing, and the other probably dead, the fight was over, and Taylor let herself drop to the ground abruptly, arresting her fall with a jolt just feet above the top of a building before she moved, the medical tent growing in the distance- the fight may be over, but the cleanup was just beginning, and she'd have to move quickly in order to actually get the visiting capes to help out at all.
Don't get her wrong, she was proud of her contribution to sending the Simurgh packing, even if it was pretty clear that Volur was the major factor there. That said, having the Simurgh turn its blank gaze on you hatefully (could a blank face convey hate? if that wasn't the case normally, the Simurgh sure as shit could), even if it was in retreat, was an experience she was perfectly okay not repeating.
Shooting down any one of the little versions of Bohu that made it out of Vista's maze of twisted space without falling off of a surprise pitfall and shattering itself all over the parking lot was more than enough for her tastes.
It didn't last, of course.
The disruption, in this case, took the form of a leather-clad archer stepping out from within a tent that she couldn't have fit in, not with that big of a bow.
"Quarrel! What happened?" Vista turned and left, leaving the gap within the shields that had formerly been filled by her impossible maze wide open and letting the monsters rush in.
"Killed the Teeth," is what Flechette heard before she returned her focus to the task in front of her. Absently, she noticed the glasslike shards of the shields nominally to her right drifting into the area formerly covered by Vista, but her focus was mostly dominated by the encroaching minions.
Despite her name, she hadn't been allowed access to the PRT's stores of flechette canisters (kept in the event of something like a Slaughterhouse incursion or a Biotinker like Nilbog, not that the former was really possible at this point), and while that was probably the correct move in most cases, this was one situation where she really wished the specialty ammunition was available to her, resource limitations and permissions be damned.
Still, she would make do with what she had, that being her arbalest and a toy version of the foil she used to use from the gift shop (she hated the way it made her feel like March, but in a situation like this, she'd take every weapon she could get).
She quickly stopped trying to line up her shots to take out four or five of the things at a time- the time was better spent putting multiple bolts in the air, and eventually they clustered together so much that even snapshots would pass through as many of the things.
Fortunately, they didn't get close enough to force her to draw the sword- five projectiles lanced forwards over her shoulders, trailing crackling green light, and slammed to the ground in the middle of the horde, detonating in clouds of superheated gases that left shattered creatures in their wake. In the time that it took the minions that were further back to press forwards, fear apparently unknown to them, the girl in a bloodred scarf bridging the gap between her whole head mask and her red-streaked crop top spread her hands out wide, glassy shards carving their way into existence to protect the medical tent.
"Get your head in the game, kid!" she snapped at Vista, eyes wide with fury and terror behind her mask. "Slacking off like that gets people killed!"
The diminutive Ward (ex-Ward? Flechette wasn't quite sure, given some of the issues ENE had had of late obstructing normal operations, especially administratively, and now wasn't the time to ask) made to respond, but she was cut off by Quarrel, whose voice brooked no argument. "Not the time. Flechette, Vista, with me. We're taking the high ground to see about cutting those things off at the source. Vex… stay safe." Her voice softened on the last. "We're all that's left, I want to have someone who knows what they were like before."
The now-identified Vex nodded curtly. "Go." There was pain in that voice, but also resolve, and Flechette found herself taking another look at the girl and how her costume accentuated and highlighted her tanned muscle.
Vista turned, looking up to the top of the PRT building, and it was only her sense of timing that let Flechette close her eyes to avoid the sight of space bending around the three of them like the rules in a playground game of tag. She didn't open them again until she felt the cool breeze on her face, and then immediately took a step back because they were mere inches away from the edge of the roof.
"Geez, warn me next time!" Flechette spared one last thought for Vex, then put the other girl out of her mind for the time being, running a check on her arbalest out of long-ingrained habit. "What's the plan here?"
"Hit the Endbringer, don't get hit. Vista, you're focusing on the latter. Flechette, pick your targets, but focus more on the big ones than the minions." Quarrel's voice seemed to befit a general commanding their troops more than the situation they were in, but it was a sound move.
Quarrel started firing at a rate that almost beggared belief, alternating targets between the creatures on the ground (that had been gradually deviating from the humanoid form as the battle went on, with claws, tails, and quadrupedal body plans becoming more and more common) and Bohu. Flechette, firing at a more restrained rate, was mostly firing at Bohu, with an occasional shot aimed for Tohu.
As they had at the Simurgh fight, Flechette's attacks passed through the Endbringer, although at this distance it was hard to see if it wasn't being backlit, letting light pass through the holes to make them more noticeable.
In contrast to Lily's steady, almost singleminded fire, Quarrel seemed to be all over the place, with arrows covered in all sorts of exotic energy effects from blue plasma to orange shells of something to even one that dissolved into a stream of red… probably light, as it pointed a number of creatures out of existence.
Eventually, she seemed to hit on something she felt confident would work mere moments after Legend and Eidolon made their arrival known, loosing seven arrows within a second. As they passed beyond the bow, they shivered, and in their place appeared pink needles of some kind of crystal, practically humming with danger. All seven pierced the superdurable hide of Bohu, and no sooner did the seventh embed itself within the Endbringer that they all began to glow and hum concerningly.
Within a matter of seconds, they detonated in a flash of pink light and smaller shards of the material, a crack not unlike the sound of a geode being split open accompanying the detonation.
Huge chunks of flesh were blasted off the Endbringer, revealing a no-color-yet-every-color sphere at the base of its neck. Quicker than anyone Flechette had ever seen move, Quarrel had another arrow nocked and fired, seeming more a stretch of outer space than any physical projectile before it slammed into the sphere.
The Endbringer toppled backwards.
Quarrel held an arrow in her hand, ready to nock, but not quite strung yet. "Be ready, in case it gets back up."
"What do you mean, 'in case'?" asked Flechette, one last bolt winging skywards to punch a hole through Tohu.
"It should be in Yu Di's hands now, but the Endbringers are not alive in the same way as something like the Butcher. Still, I doubt it has a powerful enough benefactor to shield it from from the vastness of the universe- ah, there we go." Flechette turned to the Endbringer to see it flaking away, almost as if it were made of layers being peeled back by a child who was moving too fast to preserve the wrapping paper of this year's first Christmas present.
"Is that… normal?"
"Normal enough- constructs and spirits given form react differently than mortals do to that arrow, but this is a not entirely unique expression." Quarrel looked down to Vista. "C'mon, kid. Let's get down there and see what we can't do to help with rescue efforts."
"...and you're sure it's dead? All dead, not just mostly dead?" asked Flechette.
"Dead enough that it's time to start going through its pockets looking for loose change."
With that, Quarrel stepped off the roof, vanishing before she could fall more than five feet and (probably) appearing outside the medical tent down in the parking lot below.
"Show-off," grumbled Vista. "Now come on, time's wasting."
"R-right," said Flechette, taking the proffered hand and closing her eyes again to not see sights that would have her throwing up from the inside.
When they arrived on the ground, Flechette kept staring at the flakes of Endbringer rising into the sky until someone nudged her, jumping away and half-drawing the toy sword at her side before she recognized Vex from earlier, hands raised nonthreateningly. "Hey, sorry, not looking to scare you or anything."
"What's up?" asked Flechette, still internally reeling at being witness to the killing of an Endbringer but more than able to keep up a good front.
"Wanted to check in with you- you were looking a little overwhelmed there- well. Still are, to be honest."
"I-" She'd never had anyone she was close enough to care like that before. "Thank you."
She couldn't quite see Vex's eyebrow rise under her mask, but some instinct told her it did. "You're welcome, then. You want to talk about it while we go and try to clear out what that bitch did to the city?"
"Absolutely I do," said Flechette, eyes flickering from Vex's face down to her exposed abs briefly. "Shall we?"
The almost feral smile on Vex's face was audible in her next words. "Then by all means, lead the way, Flechette. We've got monsters to kill."
Surely this isn't going to cause any problems whatsoever.
I'm getting geared up to move within a month, if you want to throw some help my way on that one, I got me a Ko-fi (Buy Lucifra a Coffee. ko-fi.com/lucifra) and a Patreon (Patreon).
I also have a discord sir ver for author stuff now (as in as of like right now it's going live)- if you have questions or comments that you'd like a more direct answer to, that's another option: Join the The Lucifralorn Forest Discord Server!
That's about it, so read, review, enjoy, and have a nice day!
-----
I almost called this chapter "Sappers and Siege Engines" but I feel like that didn't adequately apply to the dichotomy between the characters taking center stage here.-----
Taylor's massive bolt of lightning had entirely shattered the head that she hit and the hood draped over it, sending a spray of shrapnel across the sky. When the Magician moved out of the dust cloud, dodging her next bolt of lightning, Taylor saw the stump of the thing's neck, still slightly smoking, writhing slightly, almost as if it was trying and failing to regrow its head because of something in her attack."Taylor!" She turned just in time to catch Victoria coming in for what would have been a bone-rattling hug on a normal person (or even some Brutes). "I thought- When you just took that blast-"
"I'm here, Vicky," said Taylor quietly, wrapping her arms around her girlfriend and squeezing gently, raising a barrier around them to prevent the Magician from hitting them while they were vulnerable. "It's gonna take more than some grimderp Living Tribunal knockoff to put me out."
Vicky blinked. "What?"
Taylor opened her mouth to respond, then stopped when she realized she had nothing she could say to explain the non sequitur she'd just dropped. "Never mind. How are things going up here?"
Vicky winced. "Not great. Aunt Sarah caught the edge of that blast that hit you, and she'll survive but she's lost a leg and she's out of the fight. She's lucky, though, we're having trouble keeping up with the use of both Myrddin's power and Damsel's, and it doesn't help that she's whittling us down."
"Let's see what we can't do about that."
Vicky gave Taylor a level look. "Strong words- you sure you can back them up?"
Taylor wasn't sure where, exactly, she was remembering the line from, but it seemed almost perfect for the situation. "Although only breath, words which I command are immortal." Then, more quietly: "I'm sure."
Vicky blinked twice before blushing. "Go get 'em, tiger."
The shield vanished, and immediately the two of them separated, letting one of Damsel's energy blasts scream its way between them as they both returned their focus to the Endbringer whose non-ruined faces were both gazing at them.
"You know," said Victoria, shouting somewhat to be heard over the distance, "she's not all that much taller than you are!"
"Size matters not," Taylor returned, flicking out another lightning bolt that vanished into an infinitesimal rift between dimensions mere feet away from its blonde head. "Besides," she continued, changing tacks away from direct damage towards area control and conjuring a pair of flickering runes, hagalaz and raido, above her left arm, "she's too edgy. Take off the damn hoods!" This last part was shouted at the Magician, who was at that moment flying through a particularly low-hanging cloud.
It gestured towards Taylor with one hand, and with a crack of displaced air, she was swatted leftwards, managing to stop herself just shy of a screaming cone of wrongness.
Taylor shot directly up and went to click the button on her armband. Hitting nothing but air, the fact that it hadn't stood up to the Endbringer's attack registered to her, and in a quick flicker of wunjo, a new one appeared, secured to her arm in just the same place as her old one.
After wasting precious time re-setting it up, Taylor jammed both buttons down. "Hard Override: anyone in the air, I'm trying something that might be able to disrupt its ability to reach out and touch us. Watch out for turbulence- I might not quite be able to keep the air calm as I do so."
With that said, she pushed her will through the runes, sending them blazing to life. As if in response, the Magician turned to glare at her, but it was too late to do anything, as the wispy clouds it had flown through moments before seemed to explode outwards, turning into stormclouds crackling with lightning as they wrapped themselves around the Endbringer.
The Magician wrenched one of its arms free to point at Taylor, but a bolt of lightning connected from the bindings around its waist to the outstretched limb, battering it aside with the force of a particularly disgruntled deity and sending the attack it had prepared screaming off into emptier skies.
At the same time, the winds around the Endbringer were picking up, giving the less adroit flyers nearby more trouble as they howled around the Endbringer and made its flight unpredictable at best, battering it around like a particularly energetic six year old with a stick would a piñata: with much vigor and enthusiasm, but less lasting damage.
This did, however, let the other flyers take a moment to regroup, with Legend and Eidolon finally appearing (one as a streak of actinic blue-white light and the other fading into view from within a cloud of green sparkles almost but not quite identical to a tube of glitter glue).
They took a moment to coordinate with other flying Blasters before firing, all kinds of attacks both conventional and esoteric converging on the Endbringer. Some of them were captured within small distortions of space that, given what she knew of parahuman powers, were likely a result of Myrddin being able to connect to other universes, but the vast majority impacted the Endbringer to greater or lesser extent. Some, like Laserdream's, only left what appeared to be scorch marks, but others cracked or pierced the Endbringer's flowing robes, like a not-quite-crossbow bolt that rose from ground level (probably Flechette's, thought Taylor, seeing how it penetrated through and through, ascending towards Mani's sister as if the Endbringer wasn't even there) or a beam of those same greenish sparkles that Eidolon appeared in.
Unfortunately, while the concentrated onslaught couldn't slay the Endbringer, it did quite the number on the not-quite-solid shackles of clouds Taylor had wrapped the Endbringer in.
It seized the opportunity, releasing what amounted to essentially an expanding sphere of screaming not-space, and Taylor was forced to abandon the runes she already had running in order to conjure enough defensive barriers to stop the wave from killing anyone with the power she had available.
While Taylor was distracted, it repositioned, a visible glow manifesting around its three remaining hands, before a massive explosion from below gave them all pause. Looking down, the most noticeable thing was the fact that the massive form of the Tower was toppling over, massive chunks blown out of it.
Taylor snapped her attention back to the Magician, cursing herself for her lack of situational awareness, but she needn't have bothered- it was hurtling away into the skies at a speed far in excess of anything Myrddin had ever been documented using.
With one Endbringer fleeing, and the other probably dead, the fight was over, and Taylor let herself drop to the ground abruptly, arresting her fall with a jolt just feet above the top of a building before she moved, the medical tent growing in the distance- the fight may be over, but the cleanup was just beginning, and she'd have to move quickly in order to actually get the visiting capes to help out at all.
-----
Flechette was glad that she wasn't being thrown into the fray like she had been last time she'd been in an Endbringer fight.Don't get her wrong, she was proud of her contribution to sending the Simurgh packing, even if it was pretty clear that Volur was the major factor there. That said, having the Simurgh turn its blank gaze on you hatefully (could a blank face convey hate? if that wasn't the case normally, the Simurgh sure as shit could), even if it was in retreat, was an experience she was perfectly okay not repeating.
Shooting down any one of the little versions of Bohu that made it out of Vista's maze of twisted space without falling off of a surprise pitfall and shattering itself all over the parking lot was more than enough for her tastes.
It didn't last, of course.
The disruption, in this case, took the form of a leather-clad archer stepping out from within a tent that she couldn't have fit in, not with that big of a bow.
"Quarrel! What happened?" Vista turned and left, leaving the gap within the shields that had formerly been filled by her impossible maze wide open and letting the monsters rush in.
"Killed the Teeth," is what Flechette heard before she returned her focus to the task in front of her. Absently, she noticed the glasslike shards of the shields nominally to her right drifting into the area formerly covered by Vista, but her focus was mostly dominated by the encroaching minions.
Despite her name, she hadn't been allowed access to the PRT's stores of flechette canisters (kept in the event of something like a Slaughterhouse incursion or a Biotinker like Nilbog, not that the former was really possible at this point), and while that was probably the correct move in most cases, this was one situation where she really wished the specialty ammunition was available to her, resource limitations and permissions be damned.
Still, she would make do with what she had, that being her arbalest and a toy version of the foil she used to use from the gift shop (she hated the way it made her feel like March, but in a situation like this, she'd take every weapon she could get).
She quickly stopped trying to line up her shots to take out four or five of the things at a time- the time was better spent putting multiple bolts in the air, and eventually they clustered together so much that even snapshots would pass through as many of the things.
Fortunately, they didn't get close enough to force her to draw the sword- five projectiles lanced forwards over her shoulders, trailing crackling green light, and slammed to the ground in the middle of the horde, detonating in clouds of superheated gases that left shattered creatures in their wake. In the time that it took the minions that were further back to press forwards, fear apparently unknown to them, the girl in a bloodred scarf bridging the gap between her whole head mask and her red-streaked crop top spread her hands out wide, glassy shards carving their way into existence to protect the medical tent.
"Get your head in the game, kid!" she snapped at Vista, eyes wide with fury and terror behind her mask. "Slacking off like that gets people killed!"
The diminutive Ward (ex-Ward? Flechette wasn't quite sure, given some of the issues ENE had had of late obstructing normal operations, especially administratively, and now wasn't the time to ask) made to respond, but she was cut off by Quarrel, whose voice brooked no argument. "Not the time. Flechette, Vista, with me. We're taking the high ground to see about cutting those things off at the source. Vex… stay safe." Her voice softened on the last. "We're all that's left, I want to have someone who knows what they were like before."
The now-identified Vex nodded curtly. "Go." There was pain in that voice, but also resolve, and Flechette found herself taking another look at the girl and how her costume accentuated and highlighted her tanned muscle.
Vista turned, looking up to the top of the PRT building, and it was only her sense of timing that let Flechette close her eyes to avoid the sight of space bending around the three of them like the rules in a playground game of tag. She didn't open them again until she felt the cool breeze on her face, and then immediately took a step back because they were mere inches away from the edge of the roof.
"Geez, warn me next time!" Flechette spared one last thought for Vex, then put the other girl out of her mind for the time being, running a check on her arbalest out of long-ingrained habit. "What's the plan here?"
"Hit the Endbringer, don't get hit. Vista, you're focusing on the latter. Flechette, pick your targets, but focus more on the big ones than the minions." Quarrel's voice seemed to befit a general commanding their troops more than the situation they were in, but it was a sound move.
Quarrel started firing at a rate that almost beggared belief, alternating targets between the creatures on the ground (that had been gradually deviating from the humanoid form as the battle went on, with claws, tails, and quadrupedal body plans becoming more and more common) and Bohu. Flechette, firing at a more restrained rate, was mostly firing at Bohu, with an occasional shot aimed for Tohu.
As they had at the Simurgh fight, Flechette's attacks passed through the Endbringer, although at this distance it was hard to see if it wasn't being backlit, letting light pass through the holes to make them more noticeable.
In contrast to Lily's steady, almost singleminded fire, Quarrel seemed to be all over the place, with arrows covered in all sorts of exotic energy effects from blue plasma to orange shells of something to even one that dissolved into a stream of red… probably light, as it pointed a number of creatures out of existence.
Eventually, she seemed to hit on something she felt confident would work mere moments after Legend and Eidolon made their arrival known, loosing seven arrows within a second. As they passed beyond the bow, they shivered, and in their place appeared pink needles of some kind of crystal, practically humming with danger. All seven pierced the superdurable hide of Bohu, and no sooner did the seventh embed itself within the Endbringer that they all began to glow and hum concerningly.
Within a matter of seconds, they detonated in a flash of pink light and smaller shards of the material, a crack not unlike the sound of a geode being split open accompanying the detonation.
Huge chunks of flesh were blasted off the Endbringer, revealing a no-color-yet-every-color sphere at the base of its neck. Quicker than anyone Flechette had ever seen move, Quarrel had another arrow nocked and fired, seeming more a stretch of outer space than any physical projectile before it slammed into the sphere.
The Endbringer toppled backwards.
Quarrel held an arrow in her hand, ready to nock, but not quite strung yet. "Be ready, in case it gets back up."
"What do you mean, 'in case'?" asked Flechette, one last bolt winging skywards to punch a hole through Tohu.
"It should be in Yu Di's hands now, but the Endbringers are not alive in the same way as something like the Butcher. Still, I doubt it has a powerful enough benefactor to shield it from from the vastness of the universe- ah, there we go." Flechette turned to the Endbringer to see it flaking away, almost as if it were made of layers being peeled back by a child who was moving too fast to preserve the wrapping paper of this year's first Christmas present.
"Is that… normal?"
"Normal enough- constructs and spirits given form react differently than mortals do to that arrow, but this is a not entirely unique expression." Quarrel looked down to Vista. "C'mon, kid. Let's get down there and see what we can't do to help with rescue efforts."
"...and you're sure it's dead? All dead, not just mostly dead?" asked Flechette.
"Dead enough that it's time to start going through its pockets looking for loose change."
With that, Quarrel stepped off the roof, vanishing before she could fall more than five feet and (probably) appearing outside the medical tent down in the parking lot below.
"Show-off," grumbled Vista. "Now come on, time's wasting."
"R-right," said Flechette, taking the proffered hand and closing her eyes again to not see sights that would have her throwing up from the inside.
When they arrived on the ground, Flechette kept staring at the flakes of Endbringer rising into the sky until someone nudged her, jumping away and half-drawing the toy sword at her side before she recognized Vex from earlier, hands raised nonthreateningly. "Hey, sorry, not looking to scare you or anything."
"What's up?" asked Flechette, still internally reeling at being witness to the killing of an Endbringer but more than able to keep up a good front.
"Wanted to check in with you- you were looking a little overwhelmed there- well. Still are, to be honest."
"I-" She'd never had anyone she was close enough to care like that before. "Thank you."
She couldn't quite see Vex's eyebrow rise under her mask, but some instinct told her it did. "You're welcome, then. You want to talk about it while we go and try to clear out what that bitch did to the city?"
"Absolutely I do," said Flechette, eyes flickering from Vex's face down to her exposed abs briefly. "Shall we?"
The almost feral smile on Vex's face was audible in her next words. "Then by all means, lead the way, Flechette. We've got monsters to kill."
-----
And that's that!Surely this isn't going to cause any problems whatsoever.
I'm getting geared up to move within a month, if you want to throw some help my way on that one, I got me a Ko-fi (Buy Lucifra a Coffee. ko-fi.com/lucifra) and a Patreon (Patreon).
I also have a discord sir ver for author stuff now (as in as of like right now it's going live)- if you have questions or comments that you'd like a more direct answer to, that's another option: Join the The Lucifralorn Forest Discord Server!
That's about it, so read, review, enjoy, and have a nice day!
PrognosticHannya
Far Too Enthusiastic About Etymology
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Excellent chapter!
Ding Dong...
- Pronouns
- She/They
Can't hear the victory bells over all this damn noise!
Namely, she wasn't expecting Brandish to get in her face and start screaming, most words lost to incoherence and spittle but the occasional "corrupting" and "unheroic" making their way through.
"Step back," Taylor barked, perhaps drawing a little power through the ansuz inscribed on her eye patch for kingly command, and Brandish did, albeit begrudgingly.
"Now then," said Taylor, drawing not on Odin's power but on his experiences to raise herself with kingly mein, "what is it that you were screaming about that you felt was so necessary that I hear that you would ambush me as I set down?"
"You're the reason everything's breaking down!" snarled Brandish, eyes almost seeming to glow behind the odd orange goggles she wore over her eyes. "You're why it's here!"
"Mom! What the fuck are you doing?" Even if Taylor wasn't directly subject to it, she could still see how Vicky's aura made everyone flinch back as if she had raised her hand. She was grateful that the blonde had decided to come down between her mother and Taylor- even if Taylor had, strictly speaking, faced worse, and with far more doubts of her safety (getting hit with an Annihilator-level attack and shrugging it off did wonders for the self-confidence, after all), there was something to be said about facing a spitting mad person, especially the parent to her girlfriend, that other circumstances simply… lacked.
If not for her newfound powers, she suspected that her first few meetings with Emma after being assaulted would have elicited similar feelings of fear in her.
"She's a curse on all our lives!" spat Brandish, pointing at Taylor over her daughter's shoulder and making Vicky reel back from the sheer vitriol in her words. "She's the reason why the Endbringers came! She's-"
"If not for Hodr and Strongtower, there would have been another, sooner or later," came Quarrel's voice, the unquestioned authority of a general in her voice. "Will be again for me, I suspect. You blame a child for the sin of having too much power and trying to end a thing that should not be. I wonder, would you blame yourself as easily if you were the one to trigger the next Endbringer battle? If you were the one to topple this tower instead of I?"
One part of Taylor rankled at being called a child- while she wasn't quite sure how exactly to count herself now that she had Odin's history written inside her skull, even if it wasn't anywhere close to a part of her the same way that all those years with her mother were, they were still hers, and she was far older than she looked. However, another, more practical part of herself counseled her to hold her tongue, and it was correct- from the outside, she was a child, having only lived fifteen years, even if there was far more writ upon her brain.
"I- you- that's beside the point!" snapped Brandish, cloaked in the unrighteous fury of those who have had their point flayed and lack a response.
"Not by my reckoning, nor by theirs, but continue," said Quarrel, gesturing broadly at the gradually growing crowd. "By all means, accuse a child of destroying your life. It shan't be the first time, I'm sure."
From the clenching of Brandish's fists, it was clear that Quarrel had hit her mark (not as if she wasn't known for doing so).
"That's beside the point," Brandish ground out through gritted teeth.
"By all means, Mom," Victoria said, putting enough emphasis on the title to make it clear that that wasn't how she thought of the woman before her, not truly. "Tell us what your point actually is, because I'm hearing a lot of whining about your life being ruined and not enough explaining what exactly she has to do with it."
"She got Amy kidnapped!"
"That was a coincidence at best- we both know that the leverage Coil wanted over me had nothing to do with the cape he wanted your daughter to heal," said Taylor, making direct eye contact with Carol and, almost on a whim, pulsing magic through her remaining eye to make it glow an eerie gold within her helmet almost as a threat. "Speaking of which, whatever did end up happening to her?"
"Transferred out to a classified location for power testing in the wake of her… abrupt recovery from her Case 53 status," said a cape in tans and browns that Taylor took a moment to recognize as Clay, a temporary member of the Protectorate ENE on loan from New York. "If it helps, I don't think anyone this side of Dragon knows where exactly she is."
That neatly cut Taylor's next question off at the knees.
"Your point is invalid, Aunt Carol," said Laserdream, tired but alert and hovering beside Taylor in solidarity. "Try again later, maybe."
"She poached Vista! She broke the unity of the Protectorate, leaving openings for the Teeth to come into Brockton Bay, Teeth that she even now consorts with, all because-" Brandish began, pointing at Quarrel when she brought up the Teeth.
"Yes, by all means," said Taylor- not loudly, per se, but forcefully and with the weight of authority- "tell them, how when Vista found documentation on my Trigger Event and then took the issue up with Director Piggot, she had her own Second Trigger and fled. Tell them how I locked myself into a box of filth and ruined my own eye, and how I put myself into a coma that I very nearly did not wake from, all for the sake of ruining the Protectorate." She leaned in, eye practically blazing with golden light. "Tell me how I turned my sister in all but blood against me for two years just for the chance of causing the Protectorate some minor issues with a cannibalistic gang of murderhobos."
"A dead cannibalistic gang of murderhobos," said Quarrel firmly. "Dead for violating the Endbringer Truce and attempting to kill me as I came to this battlefield."
"Good," said Taylor. Then, realizing how it could be construed, she hurried to continue. "I'm glad they're out of the way, maybe now we'll have a chance to put the Empire down."
"I don't see how that's germane to the conversation," said Laserdream, frowning.
"They attempted to poach me last time, in arguable violation of the Endbringer truce." Taylor frowned. "Actually… hmm. Brandish, do you recall any… irregularities with that situation?"
"Really? You want to talk about poaching? You, the girl who's trying to seduce my daughter away from New Wave? You disgust me."
A sword made out of some sort of energy appeared in her right hand, even as her left hand manifested a shield. That shield slammed into Vicky, sending her hurtling to the side with wide eyes, clearing the way for Brandish to lunge, sword swinging in low.
It never met its target.
A massive, ursine form seemed to unfold from within Taylor's shadow, superimposing itself between Taylor and Brandish's blade. It carved partway into the form of Styx before stopping, momentum spent and Brandish unable to push it farther.
"You get one freebie," she rumbled, eyes flashing with an eerie red light. "Now weapons off before we have to… pacify you."
Brandish wasn't fool enough to disobey, not with the sound of Flechette's arbalest ratcheting a bolt into position to punctuate that sentence.
"Thank you, for your… cooperation," said Quarrel, who hadn't drawn her bow again but had an arrow in her half-raised right hand, almost as if she was planning to throw it like a knife.
Brandish visibly bristled at that, but said nothing.
"Now then," continued Quarrel, slipping her arrow back into its quiver. "Was there a point to all that bluster, or were you just blowing smoke? If it's the latter, I don't think it'll be taken particularly well, especially given what we could be doing instead of standing around and gawking at one woman's personal grudge."
She didn't alter the tone of her voice in any way, but most of the uninvolved capes watching received the distinct impression that they were not wanted here, clearing out in favor of finding something to do that wouldn't get the cape who put down an Endbringer to pay particular attention to them.
Brandish, seeing any hope of support she might have dry up as the crowd receded, just spat at her daughter's feet. "You disgust me."
"You disappoint me," returned Victoria firmly.
Brandish turned and stalked away to the medical tent, causing raised voices inside that none of the assembled capes cared enough to listen to.
"Sorry about that," said Vicky, rubbing the back of her head. "Mom is… well, I probably shouldn't try to excuse her behavior, I really need to get out of that habit."
"Take your time, Victoria. Habits aren't broken overnight," Quarrel responded. "That said, there is a conversation I need to go have, so I'll leave you to it."
With that, the archer walked in the direction of the Thinker area, leaving a confused Vista and a visibly disgruntled Teeth cape behind. "She always has to have the last word," grumbled the member of the Teeth, sighing and then turning to follow her.
With Brandish and Quarrel gone, the focus of the attention (at least, what remains after the other capes took their leave) shifts to Taylor, seeming almost anticipatory.
Taylor, in turn, raised the eyebrow that wasn't obstructed by her eyepatch. "What's everyone looking at me for?" She had a suspicion of what was going on, but she wanted confirmation before she actually acted on it.
Laserdream, reticence poking out the edge of her battle-face, is the one to answer. "We, uh, wanted some advice on what to do in the wake of the fight? You, uh, you're the only one of the command staff present, everyone else is holed up with the Thinkers it looks like."
Taylor sighed, more resigned than anything else. "Can't argue with that, I suppose." She called on the logistical experience of Odin, eyepatch glowing with ansuz, and then nodded. "Alright, then, here's where we start…"
"Ah, don't get up on my account," said Quarrel, raising both hands palms-out as multiple of the Thinkers stood. "Just want to sit in and listen to the rest of the room about what you think about the situation both as it stands and going forwards."
"Is that what you told the Butcher when you killed them and all the Teeth except for Vex?" asked a blonde in a catsuit, seeming to only realize that she was saying that could very easily piss off the newest Butcher, one who had killed an Endbringer to boot.
By that point, though, it was too late, and the Thinkers had all leapt from their seats in a chaotic mess, attempting to flee the tent. As if to add insult to injury, the Triumvirate floated in through the entryway to the tent in a formation that was entirely too smooth for them to not have practiced beforehand.
"What's going on in here?" snapped Alexandria, glaring at all present until they stopped moving.
"Tattletale," said Accord irritably, the only one of the Thinkers who hadn't participated in the chaotic attempted exodus from the tent, "accused Quarrel of killing the Butcher and the rest of the Teeth. Given the lack of the typical hallmarks of a newly inherited Butcher- the twitching, decreased fine motor control and associated tendency towards breaking things, and plodding stride- I find it unlikely."
"I am not the Butcher," said Quarrel calmly. "As a matter of fact, the Butcher will not be a factor in terms of parahuman dynamics, going forwards, although that's more a consequence of attempting to attack Vista and I on our way to respond to this Endbringer attack with the rest of the Teeth save Vex."
When this failed to lower the tension in the room, Quarrel sighed. "Look, if I were actually the Butcher, I'd be pain blasting Tattletale for being an annoying little shit, or Accord for paying too much attention, or someone else for some bullshit justification. I've been with the Teeth for longer than some of you have been capes, I know how the damn game goes with new Butchers. Call in Vex or Vista if you want- or don't," she added when that only caused the room to tense up more, "but I'm not gonna just fly off the fuckin' handle and start attacking everyone in the room."
"Forgive us some caution," Alexandria responded dryly, "since you have shown heretofore undemonstrated utility in your… efforts against the Endbringers in a way that could, potentially, speak to inheriting the Butcher collective."
"Alrighty then, little miss subject matter expert," said Quarrel, managing to keep her irritation mostly out of her tone, "by all means, if you have some kind of device or some secret parahuman who can tell whether I'm actually the Butcher or not, call them in, but if not, then let the Thinkers sit down and worry about if my little cousin's home city's gonna get flattened by another Endbringer in a month."
Annoyingly, the first option was chosen, but it wasn't more than three minutes before the armored form of Chevalier clanked through the door. As his helmet turned to regard her, Quarrel felt something pressing against her in a direction she couldn't quite quantify, feeling almost slimy as it seemed to feel her up, but the sensation passed before she could do more than shudder.
"She's clear, no Butcher here," he said, nodding to Alexandria. "If you don't mind, I'm gonna get back to the cleanup effort."
"By all means," said Alexandria, inclining her helmeted head, and Chevalier slipped out of the tent with considerably less noise than he entered with.
"Are you satisfied?" asked Quarrel, all but ignoring the rest of the parahumans in the room in favor of making what would have been eye contact with Alexandria if not for her helmet.
"...I suppose we can't afford to dispute this any more, even for the sake of Vista's safety," said Alexandria.
"I would sooner trust the Teeth with her safety than the monster you have running the PRT here in Brockton Bay, Alexandria," said Quarrel, no longer bothering with the unbothered façade.
Before Alexandria could fire back, Legend cut in. "The situation is… under investigation, and not germane to the situation at hand. We'll leave you to it."
A muscle in Alexandria's jaw jumped, then she turned abruptly and followed Legend out of the tent, Eidolon trailing in their wake like a puppy who'd just been told that dinner was cancelled.
"Alright, now that that's squared away, let's get back to business," said a man with barbed wire on his leather jacket. "Obviously we can't talk about the results of the battle yet, except in broad strokes, but do we think it likely that Quarrel will be targeted next time?"
As the Thinkers slowly collected themselves into something resembling a collective and started theorizing, Quarrel moved into a poorly lit corner of the tent, observing without being involved.
After all, information was everything in war, and she'd take as much as she could get.
Wow. Can't believe we're finally here. I remember plotting some of this out with Demjou in the Gaylor server last August, and to finally be here, it's… unreal, almost.
Brandish is almost certainly to full-on OOC status here, and there's a reason for that.
I'm sure that nothing's going to come of Quarrel's weird sensation, no sir.
I'm getting geared up to move this week, if you want to throw some help my way on that one, I got me a Ko-fi (Buy Lucifra a Coffee. ko-fi.com/lucifra) and a Patreon (https://www.patreon.com/Lucifra), and if you become a patron, you can see my chapters a week early.
My thanks to NotableRonin for being my first (and, so far, only) Patron!
I also have a discord sir ver for author stuff now (as in as of like right now it's going live)- if you have questions or comments that you'd like a more direct answer to, that's another option:
discord.gg
That's about it, so read, review, enjoy, and have a nice day!
-----
Beta'd by Firstselector, SpytheEngineer, and Kinsfire.-----
If asked, Taylor would freely admit that she was not, in fact, expecting what happened when she landed after making sure the fleeing Endbringer wasn't going to try and come back.Namely, she wasn't expecting Brandish to get in her face and start screaming, most words lost to incoherence and spittle but the occasional "corrupting" and "unheroic" making their way through.
"Step back," Taylor barked, perhaps drawing a little power through the ansuz inscribed on her eye patch for kingly command, and Brandish did, albeit begrudgingly.
"Now then," said Taylor, drawing not on Odin's power but on his experiences to raise herself with kingly mein, "what is it that you were screaming about that you felt was so necessary that I hear that you would ambush me as I set down?"
"You're the reason everything's breaking down!" snarled Brandish, eyes almost seeming to glow behind the odd orange goggles she wore over her eyes. "You're why it's here!"
"Mom! What the fuck are you doing?" Even if Taylor wasn't directly subject to it, she could still see how Vicky's aura made everyone flinch back as if she had raised her hand. She was grateful that the blonde had decided to come down between her mother and Taylor- even if Taylor had, strictly speaking, faced worse, and with far more doubts of her safety (getting hit with an Annihilator-level attack and shrugging it off did wonders for the self-confidence, after all), there was something to be said about facing a spitting mad person, especially the parent to her girlfriend, that other circumstances simply… lacked.
If not for her newfound powers, she suspected that her first few meetings with Emma after being assaulted would have elicited similar feelings of fear in her.
"She's a curse on all our lives!" spat Brandish, pointing at Taylor over her daughter's shoulder and making Vicky reel back from the sheer vitriol in her words. "She's the reason why the Endbringers came! She's-"
"If not for Hodr and Strongtower, there would have been another, sooner or later," came Quarrel's voice, the unquestioned authority of a general in her voice. "Will be again for me, I suspect. You blame a child for the sin of having too much power and trying to end a thing that should not be. I wonder, would you blame yourself as easily if you were the one to trigger the next Endbringer battle? If you were the one to topple this tower instead of I?"
One part of Taylor rankled at being called a child- while she wasn't quite sure how exactly to count herself now that she had Odin's history written inside her skull, even if it wasn't anywhere close to a part of her the same way that all those years with her mother were, they were still hers, and she was far older than she looked. However, another, more practical part of herself counseled her to hold her tongue, and it was correct- from the outside, she was a child, having only lived fifteen years, even if there was far more writ upon her brain.
"I- you- that's beside the point!" snapped Brandish, cloaked in the unrighteous fury of those who have had their point flayed and lack a response.
"Not by my reckoning, nor by theirs, but continue," said Quarrel, gesturing broadly at the gradually growing crowd. "By all means, accuse a child of destroying your life. It shan't be the first time, I'm sure."
From the clenching of Brandish's fists, it was clear that Quarrel had hit her mark (not as if she wasn't known for doing so).
"That's beside the point," Brandish ground out through gritted teeth.
"By all means, Mom," Victoria said, putting enough emphasis on the title to make it clear that that wasn't how she thought of the woman before her, not truly. "Tell us what your point actually is, because I'm hearing a lot of whining about your life being ruined and not enough explaining what exactly she has to do with it."
"She got Amy kidnapped!"
"That was a coincidence at best- we both know that the leverage Coil wanted over me had nothing to do with the cape he wanted your daughter to heal," said Taylor, making direct eye contact with Carol and, almost on a whim, pulsing magic through her remaining eye to make it glow an eerie gold within her helmet almost as a threat. "Speaking of which, whatever did end up happening to her?"
"Transferred out to a classified location for power testing in the wake of her… abrupt recovery from her Case 53 status," said a cape in tans and browns that Taylor took a moment to recognize as Clay, a temporary member of the Protectorate ENE on loan from New York. "If it helps, I don't think anyone this side of Dragon knows where exactly she is."
That neatly cut Taylor's next question off at the knees.
"Your point is invalid, Aunt Carol," said Laserdream, tired but alert and hovering beside Taylor in solidarity. "Try again later, maybe."
"She poached Vista! She broke the unity of the Protectorate, leaving openings for the Teeth to come into Brockton Bay, Teeth that she even now consorts with, all because-" Brandish began, pointing at Quarrel when she brought up the Teeth.
"Yes, by all means," said Taylor- not loudly, per se, but forcefully and with the weight of authority- "tell them, how when Vista found documentation on my Trigger Event and then took the issue up with Director Piggot, she had her own Second Trigger and fled. Tell them how I locked myself into a box of filth and ruined my own eye, and how I put myself into a coma that I very nearly did not wake from, all for the sake of ruining the Protectorate." She leaned in, eye practically blazing with golden light. "Tell me how I turned my sister in all but blood against me for two years just for the chance of causing the Protectorate some minor issues with a cannibalistic gang of murderhobos."
"A dead cannibalistic gang of murderhobos," said Quarrel firmly. "Dead for violating the Endbringer Truce and attempting to kill me as I came to this battlefield."
"Good," said Taylor. Then, realizing how it could be construed, she hurried to continue. "I'm glad they're out of the way, maybe now we'll have a chance to put the Empire down."
"I don't see how that's germane to the conversation," said Laserdream, frowning.
"They attempted to poach me last time, in arguable violation of the Endbringer truce." Taylor frowned. "Actually… hmm. Brandish, do you recall any… irregularities with that situation?"
"Really? You want to talk about poaching? You, the girl who's trying to seduce my daughter away from New Wave? You disgust me."
A sword made out of some sort of energy appeared in her right hand, even as her left hand manifested a shield. That shield slammed into Vicky, sending her hurtling to the side with wide eyes, clearing the way for Brandish to lunge, sword swinging in low.
It never met its target.
A massive, ursine form seemed to unfold from within Taylor's shadow, superimposing itself between Taylor and Brandish's blade. It carved partway into the form of Styx before stopping, momentum spent and Brandish unable to push it farther.
"You get one freebie," she rumbled, eyes flashing with an eerie red light. "Now weapons off before we have to… pacify you."
Brandish wasn't fool enough to disobey, not with the sound of Flechette's arbalest ratcheting a bolt into position to punctuate that sentence.
"Thank you, for your… cooperation," said Quarrel, who hadn't drawn her bow again but had an arrow in her half-raised right hand, almost as if she was planning to throw it like a knife.
Brandish visibly bristled at that, but said nothing.
"Now then," continued Quarrel, slipping her arrow back into its quiver. "Was there a point to all that bluster, or were you just blowing smoke? If it's the latter, I don't think it'll be taken particularly well, especially given what we could be doing instead of standing around and gawking at one woman's personal grudge."
She didn't alter the tone of her voice in any way, but most of the uninvolved capes watching received the distinct impression that they were not wanted here, clearing out in favor of finding something to do that wouldn't get the cape who put down an Endbringer to pay particular attention to them.
Brandish, seeing any hope of support she might have dry up as the crowd receded, just spat at her daughter's feet. "You disgust me."
"You disappoint me," returned Victoria firmly.
Brandish turned and stalked away to the medical tent, causing raised voices inside that none of the assembled capes cared enough to listen to.
"Sorry about that," said Vicky, rubbing the back of her head. "Mom is… well, I probably shouldn't try to excuse her behavior, I really need to get out of that habit."
"Take your time, Victoria. Habits aren't broken overnight," Quarrel responded. "That said, there is a conversation I need to go have, so I'll leave you to it."
With that, the archer walked in the direction of the Thinker area, leaving a confused Vista and a visibly disgruntled Teeth cape behind. "She always has to have the last word," grumbled the member of the Teeth, sighing and then turning to follow her.
With Brandish and Quarrel gone, the focus of the attention (at least, what remains after the other capes took their leave) shifts to Taylor, seeming almost anticipatory.
Taylor, in turn, raised the eyebrow that wasn't obstructed by her eyepatch. "What's everyone looking at me for?" She had a suspicion of what was going on, but she wanted confirmation before she actually acted on it.
Laserdream, reticence poking out the edge of her battle-face, is the one to answer. "We, uh, wanted some advice on what to do in the wake of the fight? You, uh, you're the only one of the command staff present, everyone else is holed up with the Thinkers it looks like."
Taylor sighed, more resigned than anything else. "Can't argue with that, I suppose." She called on the logistical experience of Odin, eyepatch glowing with ansuz, and then nodded. "Alright, then, here's where we start…"
-----
Quarrel was very much expecting the Triumvirate to show up before she got to the Thinker tent that she was almost disappointed that she made it into the enclosed area without being stopped."Ah, don't get up on my account," said Quarrel, raising both hands palms-out as multiple of the Thinkers stood. "Just want to sit in and listen to the rest of the room about what you think about the situation both as it stands and going forwards."
"Is that what you told the Butcher when you killed them and all the Teeth except for Vex?" asked a blonde in a catsuit, seeming to only realize that she was saying that could very easily piss off the newest Butcher, one who had killed an Endbringer to boot.
By that point, though, it was too late, and the Thinkers had all leapt from their seats in a chaotic mess, attempting to flee the tent. As if to add insult to injury, the Triumvirate floated in through the entryway to the tent in a formation that was entirely too smooth for them to not have practiced beforehand.
"What's going on in here?" snapped Alexandria, glaring at all present until they stopped moving.
"Tattletale," said Accord irritably, the only one of the Thinkers who hadn't participated in the chaotic attempted exodus from the tent, "accused Quarrel of killing the Butcher and the rest of the Teeth. Given the lack of the typical hallmarks of a newly inherited Butcher- the twitching, decreased fine motor control and associated tendency towards breaking things, and plodding stride- I find it unlikely."
"I am not the Butcher," said Quarrel calmly. "As a matter of fact, the Butcher will not be a factor in terms of parahuman dynamics, going forwards, although that's more a consequence of attempting to attack Vista and I on our way to respond to this Endbringer attack with the rest of the Teeth save Vex."
When this failed to lower the tension in the room, Quarrel sighed. "Look, if I were actually the Butcher, I'd be pain blasting Tattletale for being an annoying little shit, or Accord for paying too much attention, or someone else for some bullshit justification. I've been with the Teeth for longer than some of you have been capes, I know how the damn game goes with new Butchers. Call in Vex or Vista if you want- or don't," she added when that only caused the room to tense up more, "but I'm not gonna just fly off the fuckin' handle and start attacking everyone in the room."
"Forgive us some caution," Alexandria responded dryly, "since you have shown heretofore undemonstrated utility in your… efforts against the Endbringers in a way that could, potentially, speak to inheriting the Butcher collective."
"Alrighty then, little miss subject matter expert," said Quarrel, managing to keep her irritation mostly out of her tone, "by all means, if you have some kind of device or some secret parahuman who can tell whether I'm actually the Butcher or not, call them in, but if not, then let the Thinkers sit down and worry about if my little cousin's home city's gonna get flattened by another Endbringer in a month."
Annoyingly, the first option was chosen, but it wasn't more than three minutes before the armored form of Chevalier clanked through the door. As his helmet turned to regard her, Quarrel felt something pressing against her in a direction she couldn't quite quantify, feeling almost slimy as it seemed to feel her up, but the sensation passed before she could do more than shudder.
"She's clear, no Butcher here," he said, nodding to Alexandria. "If you don't mind, I'm gonna get back to the cleanup effort."
"By all means," said Alexandria, inclining her helmeted head, and Chevalier slipped out of the tent with considerably less noise than he entered with.
"Are you satisfied?" asked Quarrel, all but ignoring the rest of the parahumans in the room in favor of making what would have been eye contact with Alexandria if not for her helmet.
"...I suppose we can't afford to dispute this any more, even for the sake of Vista's safety," said Alexandria.
"I would sooner trust the Teeth with her safety than the monster you have running the PRT here in Brockton Bay, Alexandria," said Quarrel, no longer bothering with the unbothered façade.
Before Alexandria could fire back, Legend cut in. "The situation is… under investigation, and not germane to the situation at hand. We'll leave you to it."
A muscle in Alexandria's jaw jumped, then she turned abruptly and followed Legend out of the tent, Eidolon trailing in their wake like a puppy who'd just been told that dinner was cancelled.
"Alright, now that that's squared away, let's get back to business," said a man with barbed wire on his leather jacket. "Obviously we can't talk about the results of the battle yet, except in broad strokes, but do we think it likely that Quarrel will be targeted next time?"
As the Thinkers slowly collected themselves into something resembling a collective and started theorizing, Quarrel moved into a poorly lit corner of the tent, observing without being involved.
After all, information was everything in war, and she'd take as much as she could get.
-----
And that's that!Wow. Can't believe we're finally here. I remember plotting some of this out with Demjou in the Gaylor server last August, and to finally be here, it's… unreal, almost.
Brandish is almost certainly to full-on OOC status here, and there's a reason for that.
I'm sure that nothing's going to come of Quarrel's weird sensation, no sir.
I'm getting geared up to move this week, if you want to throw some help my way on that one, I got me a Ko-fi (Buy Lucifra a Coffee. ko-fi.com/lucifra) and a Patreon (https://www.patreon.com/Lucifra), and if you become a patron, you can see my chapters a week early.
My thanks to NotableRonin for being my first (and, so far, only) Patron!
I also have a discord sir ver for author stuff now (as in as of like right now it's going live)- if you have questions or comments that you'd like a more direct answer to, that's another option:
Join the The Lucifralorn Forest Discord Server!
Check out the The Lucifralorn Forest community on Discord - hang out with 20 other members and enjoy free voice and text chat.
That's about it, so read, review, enjoy, and have a nice day!
PrognosticHannya
Far Too Enthusiastic About Etymology
- Pronouns
- She/Her
I forget, is Calvert running the PRT ENE in this fic?
Excellent chapter btw!
- Pronouns
- She/They
Nope, he got got after Echidna. ENE is all Piggot with a side order of the Empire's Masters sticking their oar in
PrognosticHannya
Far Too Enthusiastic About Etymology
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Shit right, Gladly. I hope we see more of how his power works on people, it's absolutely fascinating.
- Location
- Greater Minneapolis Metro
- Pronouns
- He/Him
I think you might have flip-flopped tenses a couple of times. Apologies if I'm misreading.
Other than that, entertaining chapter! 👍
Past tense.
Present.
Past.
Present.
Other than that, entertaining chapter! 👍
Past tense.
Present.
Past.
Present.
...The Status Quo is Dead
- Pronouns
- She/They
In the wake of the death of a constant, what changes?
One other thing I want to clarify (from TV Tropes): Quarrel didn't inherit not because she's not a parahuman- she's both a parahuman and a deity, not entirely unlike Taylor- but because she killed both the current host of the Butcher and the Butcher Collective at the same time.
Not out of any sense of civic pride, no- not even the proudest and loudest of Brocktonites was willing to go up against the Big Apple on that one, with the potential exception of some of the cape fans or gang members who were touting the presence of one cape group or another as an advantage.
No, the temptation stemmed from the incredible recovery from the Endbringer attacks the cities in question survived.
Admittedly, in this case, it was almost entirely Taylor's contribution- say what you will about the effort and spirit that the capes she convinced to help devoted to helping rebuild her city, but by the nature of the fact that they'd come for an Endbringer battle, they were much better, on the whole, at destroying the traps that the Endbringers had left behind than actually rebuilding the (thankfully mostly abandoned) area of the city that the tall Endbringer had warped.
Taylor, along with Labyrinth and a Ward named Annex, were the most well-suited to putting some semblance of a building back up in the wake of the abomination that Quarrel had killed. Labyrinth admittedly wasn't necessarily adhering to the pre-existing architectural style and layouts, although given the condition of the mostly abandoned warehouses and other industrial buildings in the area, no one was going to kick up much of a fuss about that.
Once the first-wave handling of the immediate cleanup and casualty tallying, most of the capes left, with a smattering of non-locals hanging around to watch the lightshow (or, in the case of Myrddin and his posse, to keep Annex company) with the exception of the Thinker tent, which was still keeping Quarrel for something or other.
Even the medical tent had packed up, with Panacea being a major driving force behind the speed of clearing out the injured capes.
"How you feeling, kids?" asked Faultline from where she was standing right next to Labyrinth's focused form, welding mask not betraying the nerves she was clearly feeling (presumably some combination of the Endbringer and Labyrinth's spacey state).
"I'm here," said Annex, tiredness audible in his voice. "Probably not for long, though, I'm starting to get tapped."
"Don't worry about it if you do need to cut and run," said Taylor, three runes hovering above her upturned left hand and slowly turning in a cylinder, presenting a glinting golden othala-eiwaz-fehu each in turn as her outstretched right hand glowed with a spreading gold light that gradually repaired everything it clung to. "If push comes to shove, I could make the place… well, not perfect, but I could handle the rest of the damaged buildings, and given where we are it would probably be a fair sight better than it was before today." Taylor's voice turned sardonic at the end of her statement.
Aside from Victoria, who had an understanding of what, exactly, Taylor was capable of, the rest of the capes (and what few noncape bystanders had both the temerity and the even footing to keep up with the uneven terrain left behind by the interaction between preexisting rubble and Labyrinth overwriting parts of the street with things like old cobblestone, hunting trails, or well-worn wagon roads) gave her an incredulous look of one stripe or another.
After that, there was remarkably little talking, even taking into account when a panting Annex dragged himself back to Myrddin and the rest of the Chicago contingent and Labyrinth, whose path was becoming more irregular, was led away by a gently urging Faultline.
"Well," Taylor said, "they're here for a show, might as well give them one."
She rose into the air, trailed at first only by Glory Girl and then by the three runes, growing to almost be as tall as her.
"Hey, if this goes poorly, you might need to catch me," said Taylor, spinning slowly in place to face her girlfriend (and didn't that make something inside of her just melt a little bit, the idea that she had a significant other) as she said this.
"Whoa, what do you mean, 'if this goes badly'?" Vicky asked, eyes widening.
"Nothing that bad, just if, say, I overdo things, I might drop, and while I can handle a little bit of a fall, I'd rather not have to repair the building I land on again," answered Taylor, a wry smile playing across her lips.
Vicky just sighed fondly, shaking her head. "Only you, Taylor. Only you."
With that handled, Taylor closed her hand and breathed in.
Describing the way that it felt to draw in energy from the environment to power her own workings was kind of like trying to explain Star Wars to an eighth century Christian monk who'd spent the past month transcribing Beowolf: theoretically possible, if one were a Tolkienesque linguistic scholar, but otherwise it wasn't linguistically possible for Taylor to verbalize it to anyone (save Odin, since many of the terms she used to conceptualize it herself were pulled from his own understanding of the Runes, which was in a language never heard by mortal ears).
After a timeless instant, Taylor's lungs hit their full capacity, and as she exhaled, she shunted the energy she'd breathed in (for lack of a better English term) into the runes she was maintaining.
Hagalaz, the one against the small of her back and holding her in the air, she left alone, but one by one, each of the three runes that was slowly revolving around her increased in intensity- not physically, per se, but every observer knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that they were important.
Then, with no small amount of theatricality, Taylor snapped her fingers.
It was like reality blinked- one moment, Taylor was hovering over a mostly-ruined neighborhood, with patches of other worlds' buildings or landscapes overwritten in place of destroyed areas and some small spot patching, and the next, the massive runes had vanished and the ruined area of the neighborhood was completely restored.
She wobbled momentarily, and her eyelid drooped somewhat, but she shook herself briefly, then drew herself upright with kingly mien and turned to the gawkers. "The show is over! Go home!"
Slowly, the assembled crowd trickled away in dribs and drabs, until the only one remaining with Taylor was Vicky. While they were leaving, Taylor took the time to look over her handiwork, a smile making its way onto her face as she noticed the trail of various building types that Labyrinth left, breaking up the industrial chic (or lack thereof) of the neighborhood with earthy browns and tans.
"You okay?" asked the blonde, lifting Taylor's chin to make direct eye contact as she took the taller brunette by her shoulders.
"I'm not running at the game of my top-" Taylor stopped, blinked, and then sighed. "I'm not at the top of my game, but I should be fine to make it home."
Vicky didn't say anything, but her upraised eyebrow more than adequately conveyed her skepticism.
"No, really," said Taylor, breathing deeply for that extra little bit of energy before snapping her figures. As her armored hand made a surprisingly loud sound, two runes appeared hovering over her gauntlet, othala and raido both presenting outwards before they flashed into nonexistence. In their wake, they left a hexagonal panel of what looked to be amber, or perhaps tree sap, which showed Taylor's room briefly on the other side before it polished itself to a mirror's sheen. "I'll be fine getting home on my own," Taylor continued. "Besides, it's not like I'm planning on doing anything other than saying hi to Dad and then going to sleep."
Vicky continued scrutinizing Taylor for a moment longer, perhaps trying to find more exhaustion than Taylor could handle in her remaining eye, before sighing. "Stay safe, okay?"
"Of course." Taylor took Vicky's hand in hers and brought it up to her thin lips for a brief kiss before flying through the panel, which shattered in a spray of quickly-vanishing shards of something that resembled, at first glance, stained glass.
The blonde remained there for a moment, as if waiting for Taylor to return through the portal, then visibly set her jaw and flew off, the specter of her own home (and who was in it) looming in front of her.
That lasted until she entered the kitchen for a glass of water, at which point Carol bit out a brief "Victoria."
"Carol," came Victoria's equally frosty reply. "I thought you were enjoying the hospitality of the PRT for your actions this morning. Dad asleep>"
"That would be the thought, wouldn't it? No, fortunately enough, I was cleared to return home with Mark by Alexandria herself. She mentioned that my genuine belief that the apparently well-intentioned cape Volur was attempting to poach a member of a respected independent heroic organization, as is arguably the case for Vista, is enough to warrant my reaction, even if it was… excessive." Brandish didn't quite go so far as to sneer, but throughout her response, it was clear that she didn't exactly hold Victoria's girlfriend in high regard. Flashbang, of course, went unremarked on.
Victoria blinked, flabbergasted. "You- you can't possibly be blaming Taylor for having a Trigger event, which the Director responded to in such a way to cause Vista to have a Second Trigger?"
"No, of course not," said Brandish, raising her hands placatingly. "No, it's just that the way that PRT policies around Volur are, as it stands, that my reaction to your closeness to her is considered… warranted. Pursuant to that-"
"No! No way am I breaking up with her over some bullshit that Piggot set up because she's sore over how Vista ran away after learning that Piggot wanted to press-gang Taylor over her Trigger event!" Victoria's aura all but bloomed off of her, seeming to rattle the whole kitchen save for the stoic Brandish, who stood unmoved in the face of her emotions.
"For your own sake," said Brandish, tone the same calm, almost soothing motherly voice it had been before Victoria's voice rose, "I must advocate against your continued relationship. The PRT-"
"Oh, hang the damn PRT! They're an excuse and you know it!" Victoria was already bracing herself for what she suspected was coming from her mother. "What's the real reason you don't want me to date Taylor?"
"I just think that you would be better off to still be with Dean," said Brandish, slowly pushing herself up from her seat at the table and ambling over to the coffee machine, starting the pot with the press of a button. "It would be better for everyone involved-"
"What, were you counting too much on the contributions from the Stansfields to keep New Wave as afloat as it is?" asked Victoria, no small amount of dismissiveness in her voice. "Or is it that your pride can't take losing the social clout you get from your daughter being in the same circles as Max Anders and the Stansfields thanks to the boyfriend you contrived to set her up with?"
"Victoria Eileen Dallon," said Carol, some small amount of heat finally creeping into her voice. "I have let you be disrespectful before, but the insinuations you are making now are beyond the bounds of tolerance."
"So is attacking the woman who saved your daughter's life in Canberra and here during an Endbringer truce, but evidently everyone else is meant to tolerate it," Victoria shot back, rising a few inches into the air at the same time. "What's all this really about, Carol?"
A muscle in the Breaker's jaw visibly worked for a moment before she responded. "I'm trying to protect you."
"From what, heartbreak? You can't just wrap me up in bubble wrap and stick me on a shelf in your office forever! I have to grow on my own at some point, and just because you want me to live my life a certain way-"
"I can't protect you from the Empire like this!" Carol snapped, sparks of yellowish-orange light playing around her hands.
Victoria's head snapped up. "Is that what you told Fleur?"
Carol's eyes hardened. "Young lady, you will not speak to me in such a tone of voice! I will not be disrespected in my own home even by my own blood, and I refuse to allow you to endanger this family any more than you already have!"
Victoria blinked, shocked, and for a moment her aura billowed out into the room before she managed to drag it back in. "Any more than I already have? I'm not the one who decided to go public with our family's identities! I was a kid! Did you think about how easily the Empire or the Teeth would have killed me, or Crystal, or Amy, or Eric? No, Carol, out of the two of us, I'm not the one you should be pointing at when it comes to endangering our family."
Carol's face flushed red. "Get out of my house!"
For a moment, Victoria thought about taking the direct route, but then her more rational mind reasserted itself.
"Goodbye, Carol," she said, entirely too much to verbalize stuffed into the two words that she left behind.
After the door clicked shut, she rose into the air until the cold started nipping through her force field and costume, then screamed, one long, guttural sound that slowly petered out as she finally ran out of air.
That done, she dove down, splashing into the bay for long enough to wet her face, then emerged in a spray of glimmering droplets.
Now that the venting was out of the way (at least for now), she could focus on her next priority- finding a place to sleep tonight. In the long term, she'd prefer wherever it was that Amy had all but moved out to, but that whole neighborhood had been caught up in the Endbringer's Shaker effect, and she wasn't sure if her sister was looking for somewhere new or not.
In the meantime, though, she'd probably be able to crash on Taylor's couch- while Mr. Hebert reminded her of her own father in too many ways, she was sure that he'd at least let her stay the night.
Course charted, Victoria rose further into the air, then flew off towards her girlfriend's house.
I might need to pull back on update frequency some- not for Incense, that'll still be every four weeks or so, but I might not be posting as many things in between chapters of this fic. We'll see. At the very least I don't think the next four weeks are going to be too too impacted, I've got at least that much buffer, but after that things might slow down.
If you want to support me as a writer, I got me a Ko-fi (Buy Lucifra a Coffee. ko-fi.com/lucifra) and a Patreon (Patreon), and if you become a patron, you can see my chapters a week early.
Speaking of which, my thanks to NotableRonin and Ember for being patrons!
I also have a discord sir ver for author stuff- if you have questions or comments that you'd like a more direct , that's another option: Discord - A New Way to Chat with Friends & Communities
That's about it, so read, review, enjoy, and have a nice day!
-----
Okay so heads up: Vicky is Kinda Pissed At Carol so she's saying things she doesn't mean (and some things she does mean) to get a reaction out of her and because she's pissed, so just be aware of that.One other thing I want to clarify (from TV Tropes): Quarrel didn't inherit not because she's not a parahuman- she's both a parahuman and a deity, not entirely unlike Taylor- but because she killed both the current host of the Butcher and the Butcher Collective at the same time.
-----
Taylor was almost tempted to compare Brockton Bay to New York City.Not out of any sense of civic pride, no- not even the proudest and loudest of Brocktonites was willing to go up against the Big Apple on that one, with the potential exception of some of the cape fans or gang members who were touting the presence of one cape group or another as an advantage.
No, the temptation stemmed from the incredible recovery from the Endbringer attacks the cities in question survived.
Admittedly, in this case, it was almost entirely Taylor's contribution- say what you will about the effort and spirit that the capes she convinced to help devoted to helping rebuild her city, but by the nature of the fact that they'd come for an Endbringer battle, they were much better, on the whole, at destroying the traps that the Endbringers had left behind than actually rebuilding the (thankfully mostly abandoned) area of the city that the tall Endbringer had warped.
Taylor, along with Labyrinth and a Ward named Annex, were the most well-suited to putting some semblance of a building back up in the wake of the abomination that Quarrel had killed. Labyrinth admittedly wasn't necessarily adhering to the pre-existing architectural style and layouts, although given the condition of the mostly abandoned warehouses and other industrial buildings in the area, no one was going to kick up much of a fuss about that.
Once the first-wave handling of the immediate cleanup and casualty tallying, most of the capes left, with a smattering of non-locals hanging around to watch the lightshow (or, in the case of Myrddin and his posse, to keep Annex company) with the exception of the Thinker tent, which was still keeping Quarrel for something or other.
Even the medical tent had packed up, with Panacea being a major driving force behind the speed of clearing out the injured capes.
"How you feeling, kids?" asked Faultline from where she was standing right next to Labyrinth's focused form, welding mask not betraying the nerves she was clearly feeling (presumably some combination of the Endbringer and Labyrinth's spacey state).
"I'm here," said Annex, tiredness audible in his voice. "Probably not for long, though, I'm starting to get tapped."
"Don't worry about it if you do need to cut and run," said Taylor, three runes hovering above her upturned left hand and slowly turning in a cylinder, presenting a glinting golden othala-eiwaz-fehu each in turn as her outstretched right hand glowed with a spreading gold light that gradually repaired everything it clung to. "If push comes to shove, I could make the place… well, not perfect, but I could handle the rest of the damaged buildings, and given where we are it would probably be a fair sight better than it was before today." Taylor's voice turned sardonic at the end of her statement.
Aside from Victoria, who had an understanding of what, exactly, Taylor was capable of, the rest of the capes (and what few noncape bystanders had both the temerity and the even footing to keep up with the uneven terrain left behind by the interaction between preexisting rubble and Labyrinth overwriting parts of the street with things like old cobblestone, hunting trails, or well-worn wagon roads) gave her an incredulous look of one stripe or another.
After that, there was remarkably little talking, even taking into account when a panting Annex dragged himself back to Myrddin and the rest of the Chicago contingent and Labyrinth, whose path was becoming more irregular, was led away by a gently urging Faultline.
"Well," Taylor said, "they're here for a show, might as well give them one."
She rose into the air, trailed at first only by Glory Girl and then by the three runes, growing to almost be as tall as her.
"Hey, if this goes poorly, you might need to catch me," said Taylor, spinning slowly in place to face her girlfriend (and didn't that make something inside of her just melt a little bit, the idea that she had a significant other) as she said this.
"Whoa, what do you mean, 'if this goes badly'?" Vicky asked, eyes widening.
"Nothing that bad, just if, say, I overdo things, I might drop, and while I can handle a little bit of a fall, I'd rather not have to repair the building I land on again," answered Taylor, a wry smile playing across her lips.
Vicky just sighed fondly, shaking her head. "Only you, Taylor. Only you."
With that handled, Taylor closed her hand and breathed in.
Describing the way that it felt to draw in energy from the environment to power her own workings was kind of like trying to explain Star Wars to an eighth century Christian monk who'd spent the past month transcribing Beowolf: theoretically possible, if one were a Tolkienesque linguistic scholar, but otherwise it wasn't linguistically possible for Taylor to verbalize it to anyone (save Odin, since many of the terms she used to conceptualize it herself were pulled from his own understanding of the Runes, which was in a language never heard by mortal ears).
After a timeless instant, Taylor's lungs hit their full capacity, and as she exhaled, she shunted the energy she'd breathed in (for lack of a better English term) into the runes she was maintaining.
Hagalaz, the one against the small of her back and holding her in the air, she left alone, but one by one, each of the three runes that was slowly revolving around her increased in intensity- not physically, per se, but every observer knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that they were important.
Then, with no small amount of theatricality, Taylor snapped her fingers.
It was like reality blinked- one moment, Taylor was hovering over a mostly-ruined neighborhood, with patches of other worlds' buildings or landscapes overwritten in place of destroyed areas and some small spot patching, and the next, the massive runes had vanished and the ruined area of the neighborhood was completely restored.
She wobbled momentarily, and her eyelid drooped somewhat, but she shook herself briefly, then drew herself upright with kingly mien and turned to the gawkers. "The show is over! Go home!"
Slowly, the assembled crowd trickled away in dribs and drabs, until the only one remaining with Taylor was Vicky. While they were leaving, Taylor took the time to look over her handiwork, a smile making its way onto her face as she noticed the trail of various building types that Labyrinth left, breaking up the industrial chic (or lack thereof) of the neighborhood with earthy browns and tans.
"You okay?" asked the blonde, lifting Taylor's chin to make direct eye contact as she took the taller brunette by her shoulders.
"I'm not running at the game of my top-" Taylor stopped, blinked, and then sighed. "I'm not at the top of my game, but I should be fine to make it home."
Vicky didn't say anything, but her upraised eyebrow more than adequately conveyed her skepticism.
"No, really," said Taylor, breathing deeply for that extra little bit of energy before snapping her figures. As her armored hand made a surprisingly loud sound, two runes appeared hovering over her gauntlet, othala and raido both presenting outwards before they flashed into nonexistence. In their wake, they left a hexagonal panel of what looked to be amber, or perhaps tree sap, which showed Taylor's room briefly on the other side before it polished itself to a mirror's sheen. "I'll be fine getting home on my own," Taylor continued. "Besides, it's not like I'm planning on doing anything other than saying hi to Dad and then going to sleep."
Vicky continued scrutinizing Taylor for a moment longer, perhaps trying to find more exhaustion than Taylor could handle in her remaining eye, before sighing. "Stay safe, okay?"
"Of course." Taylor took Vicky's hand in hers and brought it up to her thin lips for a brief kiss before flying through the panel, which shattered in a spray of quickly-vanishing shards of something that resembled, at first glance, stained glass.
The blonde remained there for a moment, as if waiting for Taylor to return through the portal, then visibly set her jaw and flew off, the specter of her own home (and who was in it) looming in front of her.
-----
Contrary to what Victoria was dreading, she was not confronted by Carol immediately upon entering the house. After a moment, she managed to convince herself that no, they wouldn't just let her get away with attempting to attack another cape less than ten minutes after the death of an Endbringer.That lasted until she entered the kitchen for a glass of water, at which point Carol bit out a brief "Victoria."
"Carol," came Victoria's equally frosty reply. "I thought you were enjoying the hospitality of the PRT for your actions this morning. Dad asleep>"
"That would be the thought, wouldn't it? No, fortunately enough, I was cleared to return home with Mark by Alexandria herself. She mentioned that my genuine belief that the apparently well-intentioned cape Volur was attempting to poach a member of a respected independent heroic organization, as is arguably the case for Vista, is enough to warrant my reaction, even if it was… excessive." Brandish didn't quite go so far as to sneer, but throughout her response, it was clear that she didn't exactly hold Victoria's girlfriend in high regard. Flashbang, of course, went unremarked on.
Victoria blinked, flabbergasted. "You- you can't possibly be blaming Taylor for having a Trigger event, which the Director responded to in such a way to cause Vista to have a Second Trigger?"
"No, of course not," said Brandish, raising her hands placatingly. "No, it's just that the way that PRT policies around Volur are, as it stands, that my reaction to your closeness to her is considered… warranted. Pursuant to that-"
"No! No way am I breaking up with her over some bullshit that Piggot set up because she's sore over how Vista ran away after learning that Piggot wanted to press-gang Taylor over her Trigger event!" Victoria's aura all but bloomed off of her, seeming to rattle the whole kitchen save for the stoic Brandish, who stood unmoved in the face of her emotions.
"For your own sake," said Brandish, tone the same calm, almost soothing motherly voice it had been before Victoria's voice rose, "I must advocate against your continued relationship. The PRT-"
"Oh, hang the damn PRT! They're an excuse and you know it!" Victoria was already bracing herself for what she suspected was coming from her mother. "What's the real reason you don't want me to date Taylor?"
"I just think that you would be better off to still be with Dean," said Brandish, slowly pushing herself up from her seat at the table and ambling over to the coffee machine, starting the pot with the press of a button. "It would be better for everyone involved-"
"What, were you counting too much on the contributions from the Stansfields to keep New Wave as afloat as it is?" asked Victoria, no small amount of dismissiveness in her voice. "Or is it that your pride can't take losing the social clout you get from your daughter being in the same circles as Max Anders and the Stansfields thanks to the boyfriend you contrived to set her up with?"
"Victoria Eileen Dallon," said Carol, some small amount of heat finally creeping into her voice. "I have let you be disrespectful before, but the insinuations you are making now are beyond the bounds of tolerance."
"So is attacking the woman who saved your daughter's life in Canberra and here during an Endbringer truce, but evidently everyone else is meant to tolerate it," Victoria shot back, rising a few inches into the air at the same time. "What's all this really about, Carol?"
A muscle in the Breaker's jaw visibly worked for a moment before she responded. "I'm trying to protect you."
"From what, heartbreak? You can't just wrap me up in bubble wrap and stick me on a shelf in your office forever! I have to grow on my own at some point, and just because you want me to live my life a certain way-"
"I can't protect you from the Empire like this!" Carol snapped, sparks of yellowish-orange light playing around her hands.
Victoria's head snapped up. "Is that what you told Fleur?"
Carol's eyes hardened. "Young lady, you will not speak to me in such a tone of voice! I will not be disrespected in my own home even by my own blood, and I refuse to allow you to endanger this family any more than you already have!"
Victoria blinked, shocked, and for a moment her aura billowed out into the room before she managed to drag it back in. "Any more than I already have? I'm not the one who decided to go public with our family's identities! I was a kid! Did you think about how easily the Empire or the Teeth would have killed me, or Crystal, or Amy, or Eric? No, Carol, out of the two of us, I'm not the one you should be pointing at when it comes to endangering our family."
Carol's face flushed red. "Get out of my house!"
For a moment, Victoria thought about taking the direct route, but then her more rational mind reasserted itself.
"Goodbye, Carol," she said, entirely too much to verbalize stuffed into the two words that she left behind.
After the door clicked shut, she rose into the air until the cold started nipping through her force field and costume, then screamed, one long, guttural sound that slowly petered out as she finally ran out of air.
That done, she dove down, splashing into the bay for long enough to wet her face, then emerged in a spray of glimmering droplets.
Now that the venting was out of the way (at least for now), she could focus on her next priority- finding a place to sleep tonight. In the long term, she'd prefer wherever it was that Amy had all but moved out to, but that whole neighborhood had been caught up in the Endbringer's Shaker effect, and she wasn't sure if her sister was looking for somewhere new or not.
In the meantime, though, she'd probably be able to crash on Taylor's couch- while Mr. Hebert reminded her of her own father in too many ways, she was sure that he'd at least let her stay the night.
Course charted, Victoria rose further into the air, then flew off towards her girlfriend's house.
-----
And that's that!I might need to pull back on update frequency some- not for Incense, that'll still be every four weeks or so, but I might not be posting as many things in between chapters of this fic. We'll see. At the very least I don't think the next four weeks are going to be too too impacted, I've got at least that much buffer, but after that things might slow down.
If you want to support me as a writer, I got me a Ko-fi (Buy Lucifra a Coffee. ko-fi.com/lucifra) and a Patreon (Patreon), and if you become a patron, you can see my chapters a week early.
Speaking of which, my thanks to NotableRonin and Ember for being patrons!
I also have a discord sir ver for author stuff- if you have questions or comments that you'd like a more direct , that's another option: Discord - A New Way to Chat with Friends & Communities
That's about it, so read, review, enjoy, and have a nice day!
- Location
- leiden (NL)
Carol seems to be getting off with her actions incredibly lightly.
I suspect backroom shenanigans
I suspect backroom shenanigans
You Can't Go Home Again
- Pronouns
- She/They
…especially if you get kicked out.
Partway around the dining room table, Danny looked up at Victoria, while the hovering specter of Odin at Taylor's shoulder had already been looking at her.
Vicky, hair looking somehow stringier than it had of late despite all of the brushing Taylor had given it that morning, sighed, seeming more seven than teen. "Do I have to?" she asked, not quite to the point of whining but certainly within the same vocal zip code.
"If you want me to go," said Danny, mouth twitching as if to grimace before he arrested the motion, "I can- if you want this to be a moment with just Taylor and Odin."
"Either way," said Taylor, compassion covering an unyielding core of certainty in her voice, "if only for your own sake, you need to externalize this before it starts to… fester." She frowned briefly. "I speak from experience."
From her expression, Taylor was fairly sure that Vicky hadn't caught Danny's wince, which was on the balance a good thing, she suspected (she didn't want to get caught up in that whole mess now, if at all). "Well, uh… Taylor, what context do they have on what I told you about me?"
"Odin knows what I know," said Taylor. "Danny knows what's public knowledge."
Again, Danny winced, which Vicky noticed this time. "Right. Well, uh, the public knowledge of my Trigger doesn't cover everything there. I don't- I can't go into all of it, but a lot of it was tied up in Carol. She was- there's a lot of expectations and pressure that she represents to me, she's the focal point of the way that I'm supposed to be a hero and falling short, and she's- that moment, where everything falls apart just before you black out and wake up with powers, I looked at her, and she was on her phone. I wasn't even worth her time." A bitter, ironic chuckle forced its way out of her mouth as she said this.
"All I had to do to be worth her time, apparently, is to break up with the rich white heir to a multimillion dollar corporate empire and start dating the daughter of some washed up wharf rat. No offense, Mr. Hebert," she added hurriedly.
Taylor's lips thinned, but before she could say anything, the oldest person in the room spoke up. "What exactly did she say, lass?"
To Taylor's surprise, there was both disappointment and anger in Odin's voice, although in retrospect she should have expected that- as mercurial as the myths had made him out to be, Odin had always had great respect for the social compacts and responsibilities that hosts and those with power over others held, and it was a natural extension of that to include parents.
"She, ah, implied that me being in a relationship with Taylor was damaging New Wave's relationship with the PRT and its corporate donors, as well as bringing a threat over our lives from the Empire because… well, they've already killed one member of our family in her sleep, what's another?" She shrugged flippantly, as though her nature being a potential death sentence was something to dismiss with the same amount of ease as being out of ice cream.
"Rank cowardice!" Odin spat, followed by a sequence of words in old Norse comparing Carol to the offal of a frost giant mixed with the ashes of a good boat destroyed for no other reason than the hatred of its owner's enemies. "She brings shame to herself and her family, if she would refuse to acknowledge how her own actions put you in danger before you knew enough to understand the fight your family had chosen, and your family has already paid the price for that!"
Vicky laughed again, sounding almost more like a bird cawing than a person. "I told her that too, after she kept trying to deflect, and that's when she told me to get out of her house."
Odin grumbled some more, with about the same level of nordic profanity, but this time he kept it quiet enough that Danny and Vicky couldn't hear it, although Taylor still had to hear him comparing Carol Dallon to Ymir's toenail shavings and other things of similar nature.
"...right," said Danny, tearing his attention away from the semi-corporeal form of a mostly-dead Norse god swearing enough to make an entire pirate fleet blush and refocusing it on Vicky. "Right, yeah, so, do you have anywhere to stay? We can put you up for at least a little bit, I think, long enough for you to get on your feet, at least-"
"Don't worry about that," Vicky replied, waving a hand. "I've got a couple options that I think should work out okay, although I do appreciate the willingness to offer. First steps, at least, are to check in with Amy or Styx, see if I can't move in with wherever Styx and Amy's girlfriend are staying. Should be pretty schnazzy now, since I think that building's one of the ones that Labyrinth rebuilt, so hopefully there'll be enough room for me."
Danny frowned. "What about contacting people you might need to talk to? Depending on how… poorly Carol takes things, you might have more issues with your family, or legal or logistical things."
Vicky shrugged. "I mean, maybe, but as far as I'm concerned finding a place to hunker down is more important. I'll call Aunt Sarah and Crystal after I've got that all squared away, and I can't really think of anyone else I need to let know that Carol kicked me out for being gay immediately."
"Right-o, then," said Danny, rubbing at his bloodshot eyes. "Let me know if you want a ride to your sister's place, otherwise I'm going to go take a shower before I go in to see if anyone needs any help at the DWA." He grumbled something under his breath about knowing how to do something, but otherwise left for his shower quietly.
"Alrighty then," said Taylor, standing up and passing her hand in front of her face to conjure her armor and then producing another portal much as she had last night, this one leading to Winslow's roof. "Shall we?"
Vicky sighed, then pushed her glimmering hair back with one hand and slid her crown in to hold it in place with the other. "Lead the way, my dear."
With a little joyful shiver down her back, Taylor did, armor perhaps a touch brighter in the sunlight on the other side of the portal than strictly warranted, but given the circumstances, a minor show of exuberance was more than forgivable.
Victoria, floating just behind Taylor, frowned. "I know something's weird… How can you tell that Quarrel's involved?"
Taylor turned to her girlfriend, then tapped her cheekbone, just under her eye patch, the stitched rune glowing just enough to be visible through the shadowing that her helmet provided. "Quarrel's strength is never going to be illusions, and even if it was… well, let's just say that I'm more than capable of seeing through most forms of obfuscation, if I know to look hard enough."
"I see. Well then, shall we go knock?"
"We shall," said Taylor, descending to land gently on the branches of the tree just outside the door.
Before her fist made contact with the door, it swung open, revealing a slender blonde with bags under her blue eyes. "What do you want," she said more than asked, a baseball-sized orb of plasma inflating into existence over her upraised hand.
"Is that really any way for you to talk to your girlfriend's favorite sister?" asked Vicky, crossing her arms as she rose up to hover above the blonde, at least a little threateningly.
"Oh good, it's you." The orb of plasma winked out, and Sundancer tugged both of them inside, bemused yet complying, before kicking the door closed. "We've had a bunch of people showing up to try and take this building, both capes and otherwise, and a lot of them aren't willing to go away without some persuasion."
"I might be able to help out with that before I go," said Taylor, already thinking over the combination of runes that could help reinforce and extend Quarrel's efforts into something that would keep people away from the building instead of just making it seem unoccupied.
"Good," came a new voice, and Taylor turned around to see Quarrel in the red-brown leather jacket that she wore with her costume. "I've been trying, but… apparently illusions aren't really my strong suit, and I'm fending off requests from everyone under the sun, plus making sure Vex is okay after the rest of the Teeth stomped all over her Trigger- well. I'm being pulled in too many directions, and even though everyone here is helping, their skillsets don't handle the issues we need to resolve well enough to get away with things."
"I can probably at least help with the people making requests," said Victoria. "I've got more than enough experience with handling the PRT and various independent hero groups just from working with Carol, and as far as anyone else is concerned… well, I have been known to be, ah, 'persuasive', so to speak, from time to time."
Quarrel's shoulders relaxed as her breath puffed out in a relieved sigh. "That's pretty much exactly what I'm looking for. Styx and I are good at the intimidation thing, not so much at the glad-handing and face to face kind of stuff. I'd ask for your mother's help, if you think she'll let me in the door without taking my head, but it's not crucial."
"Uh, yeah, about that… she kinda kicked me out over dating Taylor," said Victoria, rubbing the back of her neck. "She's not gonna take anything from me, let alone a referral for someone the PRT is still categorizing as a Teeth member. I was hoping there was a room available for me to crash in here?"
Quarrel's face soured. "That's a real asshole move. Alright, yeah, Brandish is off the table. You're in the clear, just grow it yourself."
Victoria glared. "The fuck do you mean, grow it yourself?"
Quarrel blinked, clearly taken aback at the blonde's vehemence. "Huh? You mean you haven't figured it out yet?" Her eyes flickered over to Taylor. "Either of you?"
Faced with confusion instead of the pushback that she was expecting, Victoria's anger ebbed away. "Figured what out?"
Taylor, in turn, turned her eye to her girlfriend and focused, seeing beyond the physical with Odin's centuries of experience, backed with the power of the Runes, then barked out a laugh. "Right under everyone's nose!"
"What? Am I just doomed to be the only one out of the loop?" asked Victoria, throwing her hands up with more agitation than rage.
"Neither of us have any idea what they're talking about," said Bella, having strolled out of Taylor's shadow to stand next to Sundancer in the time since the door had been closed. Sundancer, in turn, jolted, hand rising in an aborted motion, then parsed what the Breaker had said and started nodding.
"Well then, I don't see any reason to keep them in the dark," said Quarrel, turning to Taylor.
She blinked. "Why are you looking at me? I'm not trying to keep it a secret per se, it's just one of those things that I'm not shouting from the rooftops."
"Will someone please tell me what's going on?"
"Congratulations, Victoria," said Taylor, turning to her girlfriend. "You're a literal goddess."
This next month I might rearrange in what order I post things and bump my non-Incense fic post back by a week, based on what I have written right now, we'll see how things go this next week or two.
If you want to support me as a writer, I got me a Ko-fi (Buy Lucifra a Coffee. ko-fi.com/lucifra) and a Patreon (Lucifra | Patreon), and if you become a patron, you can see my chapters a week early.
Speaking of which, my thanks to NotableRonin and Ember for being patrons!
I also have a discord sir ver for author stuff- if you have questions or comments that you'd like a more direct , that's another option: Discord - A New Way to Chat with Friends & Communities
That's about it, so read, review, enjoy, and have a nice day!
-----
Beta'd by Firstselector, SpytheEngineer, and Kinsfire.-----
"So," said Taylor, now that they had slept and had breakfast after her girlfriend (and didn't that still send a little thrill through her mind, the idea that she had someone who cared for her out of something other than familial love) had knocked at her window as she was getting in bed, "tell us what actually happened last night with Carol?"Partway around the dining room table, Danny looked up at Victoria, while the hovering specter of Odin at Taylor's shoulder had already been looking at her.
Vicky, hair looking somehow stringier than it had of late despite all of the brushing Taylor had given it that morning, sighed, seeming more seven than teen. "Do I have to?" she asked, not quite to the point of whining but certainly within the same vocal zip code.
"If you want me to go," said Danny, mouth twitching as if to grimace before he arrested the motion, "I can- if you want this to be a moment with just Taylor and Odin."
"Either way," said Taylor, compassion covering an unyielding core of certainty in her voice, "if only for your own sake, you need to externalize this before it starts to… fester." She frowned briefly. "I speak from experience."
From her expression, Taylor was fairly sure that Vicky hadn't caught Danny's wince, which was on the balance a good thing, she suspected (she didn't want to get caught up in that whole mess now, if at all). "Well, uh… Taylor, what context do they have on what I told you about me?"
"Odin knows what I know," said Taylor. "Danny knows what's public knowledge."
Again, Danny winced, which Vicky noticed this time. "Right. Well, uh, the public knowledge of my Trigger doesn't cover everything there. I don't- I can't go into all of it, but a lot of it was tied up in Carol. She was- there's a lot of expectations and pressure that she represents to me, she's the focal point of the way that I'm supposed to be a hero and falling short, and she's- that moment, where everything falls apart just before you black out and wake up with powers, I looked at her, and she was on her phone. I wasn't even worth her time." A bitter, ironic chuckle forced its way out of her mouth as she said this.
"All I had to do to be worth her time, apparently, is to break up with the rich white heir to a multimillion dollar corporate empire and start dating the daughter of some washed up wharf rat. No offense, Mr. Hebert," she added hurriedly.
Taylor's lips thinned, but before she could say anything, the oldest person in the room spoke up. "What exactly did she say, lass?"
To Taylor's surprise, there was both disappointment and anger in Odin's voice, although in retrospect she should have expected that- as mercurial as the myths had made him out to be, Odin had always had great respect for the social compacts and responsibilities that hosts and those with power over others held, and it was a natural extension of that to include parents.
"She, ah, implied that me being in a relationship with Taylor was damaging New Wave's relationship with the PRT and its corporate donors, as well as bringing a threat over our lives from the Empire because… well, they've already killed one member of our family in her sleep, what's another?" She shrugged flippantly, as though her nature being a potential death sentence was something to dismiss with the same amount of ease as being out of ice cream.
"Rank cowardice!" Odin spat, followed by a sequence of words in old Norse comparing Carol to the offal of a frost giant mixed with the ashes of a good boat destroyed for no other reason than the hatred of its owner's enemies. "She brings shame to herself and her family, if she would refuse to acknowledge how her own actions put you in danger before you knew enough to understand the fight your family had chosen, and your family has already paid the price for that!"
Vicky laughed again, sounding almost more like a bird cawing than a person. "I told her that too, after she kept trying to deflect, and that's when she told me to get out of her house."
Odin grumbled some more, with about the same level of nordic profanity, but this time he kept it quiet enough that Danny and Vicky couldn't hear it, although Taylor still had to hear him comparing Carol Dallon to Ymir's toenail shavings and other things of similar nature.
"...right," said Danny, tearing his attention away from the semi-corporeal form of a mostly-dead Norse god swearing enough to make an entire pirate fleet blush and refocusing it on Vicky. "Right, yeah, so, do you have anywhere to stay? We can put you up for at least a little bit, I think, long enough for you to get on your feet, at least-"
"Don't worry about that," Vicky replied, waving a hand. "I've got a couple options that I think should work out okay, although I do appreciate the willingness to offer. First steps, at least, are to check in with Amy or Styx, see if I can't move in with wherever Styx and Amy's girlfriend are staying. Should be pretty schnazzy now, since I think that building's one of the ones that Labyrinth rebuilt, so hopefully there'll be enough room for me."
Danny frowned. "What about contacting people you might need to talk to? Depending on how… poorly Carol takes things, you might have more issues with your family, or legal or logistical things."
Vicky shrugged. "I mean, maybe, but as far as I'm concerned finding a place to hunker down is more important. I'll call Aunt Sarah and Crystal after I've got that all squared away, and I can't really think of anyone else I need to let know that Carol kicked me out for being gay immediately."
"Right-o, then," said Danny, rubbing at his bloodshot eyes. "Let me know if you want a ride to your sister's place, otherwise I'm going to go take a shower before I go in to see if anyone needs any help at the DWA." He grumbled something under his breath about knowing how to do something, but otherwise left for his shower quietly.
"Alrighty then," said Taylor, standing up and passing her hand in front of her face to conjure her armor and then producing another portal much as she had last night, this one leading to Winslow's roof. "Shall we?"
Vicky sighed, then pushed her glimmering hair back with one hand and slid her crown in to hold it in place with the other. "Lead the way, my dear."
With a little joyful shiver down her back, Taylor did, armor perhaps a touch brighter in the sunlight on the other side of the portal than strictly warranted, but given the circumstances, a minor show of exuberance was more than forgivable.
-----
"Quarrel looks to have come a long way in such a short time," said Taylor, hovering over what very convincingly appeared to be an unused building made from an oak tree grown into place, complete with acorn-shaped doorknobs and rustling leaves.Victoria, floating just behind Taylor, frowned. "I know something's weird… How can you tell that Quarrel's involved?"
Taylor turned to her girlfriend, then tapped her cheekbone, just under her eye patch, the stitched rune glowing just enough to be visible through the shadowing that her helmet provided. "Quarrel's strength is never going to be illusions, and even if it was… well, let's just say that I'm more than capable of seeing through most forms of obfuscation, if I know to look hard enough."
"I see. Well then, shall we go knock?"
"We shall," said Taylor, descending to land gently on the branches of the tree just outside the door.
Before her fist made contact with the door, it swung open, revealing a slender blonde with bags under her blue eyes. "What do you want," she said more than asked, a baseball-sized orb of plasma inflating into existence over her upraised hand.
"Is that really any way for you to talk to your girlfriend's favorite sister?" asked Vicky, crossing her arms as she rose up to hover above the blonde, at least a little threateningly.
"Oh good, it's you." The orb of plasma winked out, and Sundancer tugged both of them inside, bemused yet complying, before kicking the door closed. "We've had a bunch of people showing up to try and take this building, both capes and otherwise, and a lot of them aren't willing to go away without some persuasion."
"I might be able to help out with that before I go," said Taylor, already thinking over the combination of runes that could help reinforce and extend Quarrel's efforts into something that would keep people away from the building instead of just making it seem unoccupied.
"Good," came a new voice, and Taylor turned around to see Quarrel in the red-brown leather jacket that she wore with her costume. "I've been trying, but… apparently illusions aren't really my strong suit, and I'm fending off requests from everyone under the sun, plus making sure Vex is okay after the rest of the Teeth stomped all over her Trigger- well. I'm being pulled in too many directions, and even though everyone here is helping, their skillsets don't handle the issues we need to resolve well enough to get away with things."
"I can probably at least help with the people making requests," said Victoria. "I've got more than enough experience with handling the PRT and various independent hero groups just from working with Carol, and as far as anyone else is concerned… well, I have been known to be, ah, 'persuasive', so to speak, from time to time."
Quarrel's shoulders relaxed as her breath puffed out in a relieved sigh. "That's pretty much exactly what I'm looking for. Styx and I are good at the intimidation thing, not so much at the glad-handing and face to face kind of stuff. I'd ask for your mother's help, if you think she'll let me in the door without taking my head, but it's not crucial."
"Uh, yeah, about that… she kinda kicked me out over dating Taylor," said Victoria, rubbing the back of her neck. "She's not gonna take anything from me, let alone a referral for someone the PRT is still categorizing as a Teeth member. I was hoping there was a room available for me to crash in here?"
Quarrel's face soured. "That's a real asshole move. Alright, yeah, Brandish is off the table. You're in the clear, just grow it yourself."
Victoria glared. "The fuck do you mean, grow it yourself?"
Quarrel blinked, clearly taken aback at the blonde's vehemence. "Huh? You mean you haven't figured it out yet?" Her eyes flickered over to Taylor. "Either of you?"
Faced with confusion instead of the pushback that she was expecting, Victoria's anger ebbed away. "Figured what out?"
Taylor, in turn, turned her eye to her girlfriend and focused, seeing beyond the physical with Odin's centuries of experience, backed with the power of the Runes, then barked out a laugh. "Right under everyone's nose!"
"What? Am I just doomed to be the only one out of the loop?" asked Victoria, throwing her hands up with more agitation than rage.
"Neither of us have any idea what they're talking about," said Bella, having strolled out of Taylor's shadow to stand next to Sundancer in the time since the door had been closed. Sundancer, in turn, jolted, hand rising in an aborted motion, then parsed what the Breaker had said and started nodding.
"Well then, I don't see any reason to keep them in the dark," said Quarrel, turning to Taylor.
She blinked. "Why are you looking at me? I'm not trying to keep it a secret per se, it's just one of those things that I'm not shouting from the rooftops."
"Will someone please tell me what's going on?"
"Congratulations, Victoria," said Taylor, turning to her girlfriend. "You're a literal goddess."
-----
And that's that!This next month I might rearrange in what order I post things and bump my non-Incense fic post back by a week, based on what I have written right now, we'll see how things go this next week or two.
If you want to support me as a writer, I got me a Ko-fi (Buy Lucifra a Coffee. ko-fi.com/lucifra) and a Patreon (Lucifra | Patreon), and if you become a patron, you can see my chapters a week early.
Speaking of which, my thanks to NotableRonin and Ember for being patrons!
I also have a discord sir ver for author stuff- if you have questions or comments that you'd like a more direct , that's another option: Discord - A New Way to Chat with Friends & Communities
That's about it, so read, review, enjoy, and have a nice day!
Sandy River DL
(Verified Destroyer Leader)
- Location
- Lake Michigan
- Pronouns
- Her/She
It's specifically Vicky catching up. Everyone else, at least those who are gods themselves, knew along with us readers.
- Pronouns
- She/They
Yeah, pretty much- it's more me bringing hints I've left together to make it explicit in a Watsonian manner to Vicky (and at least Taylor) since, while readers knew, they didn't really.
As Sun Seeks Day
- Pronouns
- She/They
We'll catch that dream together someday soon.
The silence in the foyer grew tense as the two both shot surreptitious glances at each other, some more stealthy than others- for all that Taylor had the decorum that Odin in all his kingly glory could lay claim to, there was only so much she could do when Bella was on the side of her missing eye, and she was wearing chain mail to boot, and by the time she remembered that she could see through what bugs were in the room, it was already too late and she'd been caught out fair and square.
After what was probably too long, Taylor sighed. "Come on, if you want to talk. We can do it while I alter the protections around the building."
Taylor strode off into a different room than Sundancer had left through, drawing power through the ansuz rune on her eye patch to grant wisdom to guide her to the heartwood of the tree, and a moment later, she heard Bella huff, sounding almost fond, and then the gentle sound of bare feet on hard wood floors as Sophia's clone followed her.
The building was not particularly large, as far as the number of rooms on every floor, but they were laid out with the whimsical logic, or lack thereof, of nature, and the two of them had many floors (and thus, many rooms) that they had to go through to get to the tree's heartwood.
On the way down, Bella had breathed in as if to attempt to speak two or three separate times, but each time she aborted the attempt, hair swishing softly as she shook her head each time.
Eventually, Taylor acknowledged that she'd have to be the one to start the conversation, as little as she'd want to do that.
"Bella. I don't… I don't hold you responsible for what Sophia did to me," said Taylor, hearing Bella stumble slightly at the statement. "I just don't like you making excuses for her. Yes, she was- is- in a bad place, but that doesn't mean that she didn't make her own choices in that situation. It might make the choices she did make somewhat easier to understand, but that doesn't make them any less… any less impactful, for me or those around her, and just saying 'oh, her passenger made her do it' isn't something that really makes it better, not to me."
"I know that," said Bella, haltingly, normally-smooth voice quavering a little. "It's just… Sophia hated so much about herself, that it's… it's hard not to love her, at least a little."
"Is that what you inherited from her? All her hatreds, reconstructed into love?" asked Taylor, sounding more tired than anything else.
"That, and entirely too much baggage." Taylor saw, through the eyes of a spider in the corner of the room, Bella run her hand through her hair. "Well, at least we'll match your redhead friend in that respect, eh?" she asked, bitter mirth dripping from her words.
Taylor stopped so abruptly that Bella had to backpedal to not run into her. "Emma? What did Sophia do to her?" There was far more anger in that than Taylor was expecting, given all that Emma had done to her.
"That's… it's not my place to say, even if I understood how exactly Sophia changed Emma."
The edge of fear, buried underneath the compassion in that sentence, gave Taylor pause, realizing that her abruptly-clenched fist had started dripping glowing squiggles that looked, if one squinted, vaguely like runes. Slowly, Taylor forced her hand to open, letting the lighting in the room fade back to the sunbeams entering through the mirror and the faint glow from her eyepatch. "Sorry, Bella. I don't… I don't want to take what Sophia did out on you. If I do, please say so."
"I… I'll try."
"That's all I can reasonably ask," said Taylor, starting walking again. "I'll ask Emma, sooner or later, but I-"
"With respect," interrupted Bella, "make it sooner. Something tells me that things are going to get in the way, and if you don't do it soon, it'll happen never."
Taylor snorted. "I thought wisdom was Odin's thing," she said, aiming for teasing but landing somewhat short.
"Yes, well, your Stand isn't here, so someone had to fill in," Bella returned, droll tone managing the teasing better than Taylor's flatter cadence.
"You have my gratitude," said Taylor.
They came to the end of the last staircase, and immediately Taylor knew she had arrived where she'd need to be to reinforce the protections, both out of what magical knowledge she had and from the faintly glowing Chinese characters painted on the slightly raised area in the center of the room. "We're here."
"Do you need anything?" asked Bella.
Taylor flicked her wrist, closing her hand on empty air that promptly revealed itself to be a spear longer than she was tall. "Nothing in particular, I think. I should be able to get away with just the spear to do the carvings, as long as I get the positioning right…" She trailed off, leaping into the air and remaining there in a susurrus of wind and a brief flash of golden runes.
"Hmmm…" said Taylor, the rune on her eye patch glowing brighter. "This goes here," she continued, carving one rune in the gap between two different characters, "and that goes there," with another rune all but appearing out of nowhere dead center in the raised area, "and…" the spear flickered out, seeming to be taller than even Bella's hulking ursine form and with almost treelike branches, leaving nine instances of one rune around the edge of the circle, before Taylor descended once again, landing gently in the center of the raised area. Her hand opened, the spear vanishing before it fell six inches, and Taylor closed her hand again, holding a short blade that resembled a needle more than anything else.
Nine times the needle entered the flesh of her palm, and nine drops of blood fell to the rune in the center of the circle before the wounds sealed themselves over, blood both on her hand and the circle hardening into crystal in the space of heartbeats. "With this seal," said Taylor, in a language forgotten to all but her, "I bind ye runes to your purpose, in Vár's name."
She felt the runes activate with a thrum, intertwining with the protections that Quarrel had constructed in a way that she couldn't articulate to anyone save Odin, then nodded.
"Alright, that's that," she said, feeling as much as seeing the way in which the runes glowed an earthy green to match the Chinese characters, the occasional spark of golden light flickering through the runes or the crystal on the raised area.
Taylor swept up the stairs, Bella seeming almost pulled along in her wake as she strode through the building.
"Have you thought… have you thought about the prospect of starting a hero team? A real, independent hero team?" asked Bella, halfway tempted to make the shift into her ursine form to keep up with the taller girl.
"I can't say I have, why?" asked Taylor, slowing and turning around to face Bella while continuing to walk backwards.
"Well, ah," stuttered Bella, a little distracted both by the intensity of Taylor's gaze and her feet as she glide-stepped backwards, as evidenced by her eyes flickering downwards. "New Wave is having some problems, what with Glory Girl and Amy not being on great terms with their mom and all that, plus the Protectorate is… not somewhere you really would want to be, plus you've already got more than enough capes who would- I- If you told me you were going to China to kill the Yàngbǎn, I'd be right there at your side, and I'm not the only one in this building."
Taylor blinked, the idea not, in fact, having occurred to her, before humming. "I can see how that could be beneficial, in this time, but… maybe not right in the wake of an Endbringer attack. I'd want to talk with anyone who'd want to join this team before, too, so we could make sure everyone's on the same page."
"I'm not asking you to make a commitment right now, no, I'm just asking… think about it, please."
Taylor nodded. "Of course." Her heel hit a stair, and without missing a beat, she turned a hundred and eighty degrees to climb it facing forwards once again.
After less time than it had taken to walk down- Taylor was much more assured in the path now that she'd followed it herself rather than relying on magic to guide her steps, and she was the one setting the pace they walked at- they arrived back in the foyer, meeting Victoria and Amy there.
"So, uh, Taylor. I think I'm gonna… gonna stay here for a while, see if I can get back on my feet without leaning too hard on you, and so I can try and feel out… whatever it is that being a god gets me," said Victoria.
Taylor had to push down her first impulse (that being to accuse Victoria of trying to abandon and/or betray her, just like Emma had) with the weight of Odin's memories and kingly bearing.
"Alright," said Taylor, nodding firmly. "If you need help, please reach out."
Taylor walked towards the door, purpose visible in her eye (or so she liked to think). Before she opened said door, Bella spoke up. "What are you up to now?"
"Taking your advice," said Taylor, closing the door and shooting into the air. It was time she got some closure.
Intellectually, she knew now that she probably would have been able to get through to… well, someone, who would have been able to help Emma and make her stop, if she'd gone.
Emotionally, though, she had already been abandoned by too many people- her father had broken, Emma had stabbed her in the back with the school system's help, and even her mother had been torn away from her, even if that wasn't her fault, and she couldn't bring herself to believe that anyone would (or could) help her.
Now wasn't the time for self-recrimination, though, and she shook off the thoughts as she walked up to the door of the Barnes house, having already left the armor behind in favor of a ruffled blouse and loose jeans. She didn't do anything so cliché as pause to take a deep breath, but there was a hitch in her steps before she went all the way up to the door and knocked firmly. Perhaps too firmly- Taylor thought she saw miniscule divots in the wood in the rough shape of her knuckles, but before she got the chance to examine it more closely, the door swung open.
Zoe Barnes' kindly eyes had always helped her with the more recalcitrant parents in her job as a doctor at the university medical center, and they went ever so slightly soft when she saw Taylor standing at her doorstep. "Taylor!" The petite blonde stepped out of the house and dragged her into a hug. "It's good to finally see you again. When I heard about-" her voice broke. "When I heard about what Emma did to you, I've been trying to get a hold of you to try and apologize, but I've never- well, would you like to come in?"
"Sure, Aunt Zoe," Taylor said, gently patting her mother's friend on the back.
After following her inside, Taylor sighed, gazing wistfully around the large living room. Yes, there was a different blanket draped over the back of the couch, and the pictures on the wall had expanded to threaten conquest of the hallway, but aside from so many small details, it was like she'd stepped back in time to before Emma had turned on her.
"Do you… want anything to drink?" asked Aunt Zoe, more than likely falling back on an old, familiar routine given her wrongfootedness.
"No, thank you, Aunt Zoe." Taylor was willing to draw comfort from that old routine as well.
"Alright, well, I am going to make some tea for myself, I think…" Zoe trailed off, bustling around the kitchen for long enough to make a cup of tea for herself before settling herself on the couch, across from Taylor.
Again, Taylor was the one who had to take the initiative in the conversation. "Do you… do you know what happened? With regards to Emma and myself, that is," she asked.
"...I don't," said Zoe, not a little shame in her voice. "I know some of what happened, near the end. I know she's the one who-" her voice cracked. "I know she helped put you in that thing, and that she tried to break into your house afterwards, but I don't know why and I don't know much else."
Taylor breathed deeply, in then out. This wasn't particularly unexpected, but some small part of her had hoped that Zoe had known more than she did.
"Those are the big moments. Emma… she did a lot of little things, and she got a lot of other people to do little things, but… well, straws and camels, you know?" Taylor shrugged helplessly. "Honestly, I just want to know why."
Zoe was silent for a moment. "I'm not sure how much you'll get out of her, but… she's here on bail, if you want to try talking to her."
Taylor nodded, then pushed herself up from the couch. "I think I'll see what I can't get from her."
Zoe nodded. "Good luck."
Taylor nodded back, then walked up the stairs, the trepidation that had been bubbling in her stomach since she made the decision to come here coming to a head.
Emma's door had had the sign that Taylor made for her torn down, leaving slightly chipped paint behind, and Taylor closed her eyes for a moment at the physical reminder of how their relationship had failed. Then, she knocked on the door- not nearly as hard as she'd knocked at the entryway.
"G'way," came the muffled voice from inside the room.
"Not yet," said Taylor.
There was a moment of silence, then the door creaked open a crack, just enough for Emma to peer out at her.
Taylor made eye contact with the single green eye visible. "Well, Ems," she said, not above using the childhood nickname to try and elicit a reaction from the redhead. "Can I come in?"
A verbal answer was not forthcoming, but Emma pulled away from the door, which swung open on its own weight.
The room was a mess, with dirty clothes, school supplies, and all manner of other things strewn across both the floor and the desk. In the center of the mess stood Emma, normally-vibrant hair dull and unkempt and her eyes lacking both the cruel sparkle that she had exhibited of late and the earlier, kinder expression that Taylor remembered from when she was still Ems.
"Well," said Emma, sounding almost accusatory if not for her apathy. "Come to gloat, I suppose?"
"Come for answers," replied Taylor evenly, internally mourning Ems just a little bit. "We were sisters, Ems, in all but blood. Why… why all this? Why try to tear me down? Why try to kill me with Sophia?"
"Because you're not strong," spat Emma, a sneer firmly fixed on her face. "You're weak, you broke after your mother, and-"
"Just because I fell apart after Mom died," said Taylor, fury warring for pity now that she understood that Emma's confidence had been a front for months, if not years, "doesn't make me weak. Humans are a social species," she continued, only vaguely recognizing the ideas she was espousing, "and our strength is in our ability to work together, so why would you call me weak when you're the one who helped put me back together? When that would just call yourself weak?"
Emma's tears came without warning, and she flopped backwards, only barely making it far enough onto her bed not to break her neck as the air whouffed out of her.
Taylor rushed forwards, already calling on the rune on her eyepatch to guide her to where Emma was injured, and-
Emma wasn't injured.
The redhead sobbed once she'd managed to refill her lungs, and Taylor, finally realizing why Emma was crying, gathered her once-friend up into a hug. Emma, in turn, clung to Taylor like a dog to a ball they refused to let their owner take.
For a long time, they stayed like that, Taylor rocking Emma back and forth gently.
Then, once Emma's tears were dry, she began to speak, and Taylor listened.
I know I wanted to get to the Danny conversation in this chapter (and the setup for the nazi squishening), but Bella, Zoe, and Emma got chatty. Whoops. Sorry to push back the nazi squishing some more.
Fried meme dinner that this fic has a TV Tropes page, that hasn't gotten a whole lot of updates of late- seeing the shout out section being so small makes me sad, with how many references I've made to date.
Next fic update might be There Is No Death, might be a oneshot, might be Rouse the Stars, might be Fragrant Smoke. We'll see.
If you want to support me as a writer, I've got me a Ko-fi (Buy Lucifra a Coffee. ko-fi.com/lucifra) and a Patreon (Lucifra | Patreon), and if you become a patron, you can see my chapters a week early.
Speaking of which, my thanks to NotableRonin and Ember for being patrons!
I also have a discord sir ver for author stuff- if you have questions or comments that you'd like a more direct , that's another option: Discord - A New Way to Chat with Friends & Communities
That's about it, so read, review, enjoy, and have a nice day!
-----
Beta'd by Firstselector, SpytheEngineer, and Kinsfire.-----
After Quarrel all but dragged Victoria into a side room, Odin's spirit and Amy in tow, to discuss her newfound apotheosis, Taylor was left to stand awkwardly in the foyer of the tree-that-had-been-made-a-house with the blonde that was probably Sundancer (and was apparently dating Amy? She wasn't quite sure on the details of that one) and Bella- that is, until Sundancer sidled out of the room, leaving just Taylor and Bella alone.The silence in the foyer grew tense as the two both shot surreptitious glances at each other, some more stealthy than others- for all that Taylor had the decorum that Odin in all his kingly glory could lay claim to, there was only so much she could do when Bella was on the side of her missing eye, and she was wearing chain mail to boot, and by the time she remembered that she could see through what bugs were in the room, it was already too late and she'd been caught out fair and square.
After what was probably too long, Taylor sighed. "Come on, if you want to talk. We can do it while I alter the protections around the building."
Taylor strode off into a different room than Sundancer had left through, drawing power through the ansuz rune on her eye patch to grant wisdom to guide her to the heartwood of the tree, and a moment later, she heard Bella huff, sounding almost fond, and then the gentle sound of bare feet on hard wood floors as Sophia's clone followed her.
The building was not particularly large, as far as the number of rooms on every floor, but they were laid out with the whimsical logic, or lack thereof, of nature, and the two of them had many floors (and thus, many rooms) that they had to go through to get to the tree's heartwood.
On the way down, Bella had breathed in as if to attempt to speak two or three separate times, but each time she aborted the attempt, hair swishing softly as she shook her head each time.
Eventually, Taylor acknowledged that she'd have to be the one to start the conversation, as little as she'd want to do that.
"Bella. I don't… I don't hold you responsible for what Sophia did to me," said Taylor, hearing Bella stumble slightly at the statement. "I just don't like you making excuses for her. Yes, she was- is- in a bad place, but that doesn't mean that she didn't make her own choices in that situation. It might make the choices she did make somewhat easier to understand, but that doesn't make them any less… any less impactful, for me or those around her, and just saying 'oh, her passenger made her do it' isn't something that really makes it better, not to me."
"I know that," said Bella, haltingly, normally-smooth voice quavering a little. "It's just… Sophia hated so much about herself, that it's… it's hard not to love her, at least a little."
"Is that what you inherited from her? All her hatreds, reconstructed into love?" asked Taylor, sounding more tired than anything else.
"That, and entirely too much baggage." Taylor saw, through the eyes of a spider in the corner of the room, Bella run her hand through her hair. "Well, at least we'll match your redhead friend in that respect, eh?" she asked, bitter mirth dripping from her words.
Taylor stopped so abruptly that Bella had to backpedal to not run into her. "Emma? What did Sophia do to her?" There was far more anger in that than Taylor was expecting, given all that Emma had done to her.
"That's… it's not my place to say, even if I understood how exactly Sophia changed Emma."
The edge of fear, buried underneath the compassion in that sentence, gave Taylor pause, realizing that her abruptly-clenched fist had started dripping glowing squiggles that looked, if one squinted, vaguely like runes. Slowly, Taylor forced her hand to open, letting the lighting in the room fade back to the sunbeams entering through the mirror and the faint glow from her eyepatch. "Sorry, Bella. I don't… I don't want to take what Sophia did out on you. If I do, please say so."
"I… I'll try."
"That's all I can reasonably ask," said Taylor, starting walking again. "I'll ask Emma, sooner or later, but I-"
"With respect," interrupted Bella, "make it sooner. Something tells me that things are going to get in the way, and if you don't do it soon, it'll happen never."
Taylor snorted. "I thought wisdom was Odin's thing," she said, aiming for teasing but landing somewhat short.
"Yes, well, your Stand isn't here, so someone had to fill in," Bella returned, droll tone managing the teasing better than Taylor's flatter cadence.
"You have my gratitude," said Taylor.
They came to the end of the last staircase, and immediately Taylor knew she had arrived where she'd need to be to reinforce the protections, both out of what magical knowledge she had and from the faintly glowing Chinese characters painted on the slightly raised area in the center of the room. "We're here."
"Do you need anything?" asked Bella.
Taylor flicked her wrist, closing her hand on empty air that promptly revealed itself to be a spear longer than she was tall. "Nothing in particular, I think. I should be able to get away with just the spear to do the carvings, as long as I get the positioning right…" She trailed off, leaping into the air and remaining there in a susurrus of wind and a brief flash of golden runes.
"Hmmm…" said Taylor, the rune on her eye patch glowing brighter. "This goes here," she continued, carving one rune in the gap between two different characters, "and that goes there," with another rune all but appearing out of nowhere dead center in the raised area, "and…" the spear flickered out, seeming to be taller than even Bella's hulking ursine form and with almost treelike branches, leaving nine instances of one rune around the edge of the circle, before Taylor descended once again, landing gently in the center of the raised area. Her hand opened, the spear vanishing before it fell six inches, and Taylor closed her hand again, holding a short blade that resembled a needle more than anything else.
Nine times the needle entered the flesh of her palm, and nine drops of blood fell to the rune in the center of the circle before the wounds sealed themselves over, blood both on her hand and the circle hardening into crystal in the space of heartbeats. "With this seal," said Taylor, in a language forgotten to all but her, "I bind ye runes to your purpose, in Vár's name."
She felt the runes activate with a thrum, intertwining with the protections that Quarrel had constructed in a way that she couldn't articulate to anyone save Odin, then nodded.
"Alright, that's that," she said, feeling as much as seeing the way in which the runes glowed an earthy green to match the Chinese characters, the occasional spark of golden light flickering through the runes or the crystal on the raised area.
Taylor swept up the stairs, Bella seeming almost pulled along in her wake as she strode through the building.
"Have you thought… have you thought about the prospect of starting a hero team? A real, independent hero team?" asked Bella, halfway tempted to make the shift into her ursine form to keep up with the taller girl.
"I can't say I have, why?" asked Taylor, slowing and turning around to face Bella while continuing to walk backwards.
"Well, ah," stuttered Bella, a little distracted both by the intensity of Taylor's gaze and her feet as she glide-stepped backwards, as evidenced by her eyes flickering downwards. "New Wave is having some problems, what with Glory Girl and Amy not being on great terms with their mom and all that, plus the Protectorate is… not somewhere you really would want to be, plus you've already got more than enough capes who would- I- If you told me you were going to China to kill the Yàngbǎn, I'd be right there at your side, and I'm not the only one in this building."
Taylor blinked, the idea not, in fact, having occurred to her, before humming. "I can see how that could be beneficial, in this time, but… maybe not right in the wake of an Endbringer attack. I'd want to talk with anyone who'd want to join this team before, too, so we could make sure everyone's on the same page."
"I'm not asking you to make a commitment right now, no, I'm just asking… think about it, please."
Taylor nodded. "Of course." Her heel hit a stair, and without missing a beat, she turned a hundred and eighty degrees to climb it facing forwards once again.
After less time than it had taken to walk down- Taylor was much more assured in the path now that she'd followed it herself rather than relying on magic to guide her steps, and she was the one setting the pace they walked at- they arrived back in the foyer, meeting Victoria and Amy there.
"So, uh, Taylor. I think I'm gonna… gonna stay here for a while, see if I can get back on my feet without leaning too hard on you, and so I can try and feel out… whatever it is that being a god gets me," said Victoria.
Taylor had to push down her first impulse (that being to accuse Victoria of trying to abandon and/or betray her, just like Emma had) with the weight of Odin's memories and kingly bearing.
"Alright," said Taylor, nodding firmly. "If you need help, please reach out."
Taylor walked towards the door, purpose visible in her eye (or so she liked to think). Before she opened said door, Bella spoke up. "What are you up to now?"
"Taking your advice," said Taylor, closing the door and shooting into the air. It was time she got some closure.
-----
Taylor hadn't been able to make herself go to the Barnes house in years.Intellectually, she knew now that she probably would have been able to get through to… well, someone, who would have been able to help Emma and make her stop, if she'd gone.
Emotionally, though, she had already been abandoned by too many people- her father had broken, Emma had stabbed her in the back with the school system's help, and even her mother had been torn away from her, even if that wasn't her fault, and she couldn't bring herself to believe that anyone would (or could) help her.
Now wasn't the time for self-recrimination, though, and she shook off the thoughts as she walked up to the door of the Barnes house, having already left the armor behind in favor of a ruffled blouse and loose jeans. She didn't do anything so cliché as pause to take a deep breath, but there was a hitch in her steps before she went all the way up to the door and knocked firmly. Perhaps too firmly- Taylor thought she saw miniscule divots in the wood in the rough shape of her knuckles, but before she got the chance to examine it more closely, the door swung open.
Zoe Barnes' kindly eyes had always helped her with the more recalcitrant parents in her job as a doctor at the university medical center, and they went ever so slightly soft when she saw Taylor standing at her doorstep. "Taylor!" The petite blonde stepped out of the house and dragged her into a hug. "It's good to finally see you again. When I heard about-" her voice broke. "When I heard about what Emma did to you, I've been trying to get a hold of you to try and apologize, but I've never- well, would you like to come in?"
"Sure, Aunt Zoe," Taylor said, gently patting her mother's friend on the back.
After following her inside, Taylor sighed, gazing wistfully around the large living room. Yes, there was a different blanket draped over the back of the couch, and the pictures on the wall had expanded to threaten conquest of the hallway, but aside from so many small details, it was like she'd stepped back in time to before Emma had turned on her.
"Do you… want anything to drink?" asked Aunt Zoe, more than likely falling back on an old, familiar routine given her wrongfootedness.
"No, thank you, Aunt Zoe." Taylor was willing to draw comfort from that old routine as well.
"Alright, well, I am going to make some tea for myself, I think…" Zoe trailed off, bustling around the kitchen for long enough to make a cup of tea for herself before settling herself on the couch, across from Taylor.
Again, Taylor was the one who had to take the initiative in the conversation. "Do you… do you know what happened? With regards to Emma and myself, that is," she asked.
"...I don't," said Zoe, not a little shame in her voice. "I know some of what happened, near the end. I know she's the one who-" her voice cracked. "I know she helped put you in that thing, and that she tried to break into your house afterwards, but I don't know why and I don't know much else."
Taylor breathed deeply, in then out. This wasn't particularly unexpected, but some small part of her had hoped that Zoe had known more than she did.
"Those are the big moments. Emma… she did a lot of little things, and she got a lot of other people to do little things, but… well, straws and camels, you know?" Taylor shrugged helplessly. "Honestly, I just want to know why."
Zoe was silent for a moment. "I'm not sure how much you'll get out of her, but… she's here on bail, if you want to try talking to her."
Taylor nodded, then pushed herself up from the couch. "I think I'll see what I can't get from her."
Zoe nodded. "Good luck."
Taylor nodded back, then walked up the stairs, the trepidation that had been bubbling in her stomach since she made the decision to come here coming to a head.
Emma's door had had the sign that Taylor made for her torn down, leaving slightly chipped paint behind, and Taylor closed her eyes for a moment at the physical reminder of how their relationship had failed. Then, she knocked on the door- not nearly as hard as she'd knocked at the entryway.
"G'way," came the muffled voice from inside the room.
"Not yet," said Taylor.
There was a moment of silence, then the door creaked open a crack, just enough for Emma to peer out at her.
Taylor made eye contact with the single green eye visible. "Well, Ems," she said, not above using the childhood nickname to try and elicit a reaction from the redhead. "Can I come in?"
A verbal answer was not forthcoming, but Emma pulled away from the door, which swung open on its own weight.
The room was a mess, with dirty clothes, school supplies, and all manner of other things strewn across both the floor and the desk. In the center of the mess stood Emma, normally-vibrant hair dull and unkempt and her eyes lacking both the cruel sparkle that she had exhibited of late and the earlier, kinder expression that Taylor remembered from when she was still Ems.
"Well," said Emma, sounding almost accusatory if not for her apathy. "Come to gloat, I suppose?"
"Come for answers," replied Taylor evenly, internally mourning Ems just a little bit. "We were sisters, Ems, in all but blood. Why… why all this? Why try to tear me down? Why try to kill me with Sophia?"
"Because you're not strong," spat Emma, a sneer firmly fixed on her face. "You're weak, you broke after your mother, and-"
"Just because I fell apart after Mom died," said Taylor, fury warring for pity now that she understood that Emma's confidence had been a front for months, if not years, "doesn't make me weak. Humans are a social species," she continued, only vaguely recognizing the ideas she was espousing, "and our strength is in our ability to work together, so why would you call me weak when you're the one who helped put me back together? When that would just call yourself weak?"
Emma's tears came without warning, and she flopped backwards, only barely making it far enough onto her bed not to break her neck as the air whouffed out of her.
Taylor rushed forwards, already calling on the rune on her eyepatch to guide her to where Emma was injured, and-
Emma wasn't injured.
The redhead sobbed once she'd managed to refill her lungs, and Taylor, finally realizing why Emma was crying, gathered her once-friend up into a hug. Emma, in turn, clung to Taylor like a dog to a ball they refused to let their owner take.
For a long time, they stayed like that, Taylor rocking Emma back and forth gently.
Then, once Emma's tears were dry, she began to speak, and Taylor listened.
-----
And that's that!I know I wanted to get to the Danny conversation in this chapter (and the setup for the nazi squishening), but Bella, Zoe, and Emma got chatty. Whoops. Sorry to push back the nazi squishing some more.
Fried meme dinner that this fic has a TV Tropes page, that hasn't gotten a whole lot of updates of late- seeing the shout out section being so small makes me sad, with how many references I've made to date.
Next fic update might be There Is No Death, might be a oneshot, might be Rouse the Stars, might be Fragrant Smoke. We'll see.
If you want to support me as a writer, I've got me a Ko-fi (Buy Lucifra a Coffee. ko-fi.com/lucifra) and a Patreon (Lucifra | Patreon), and if you become a patron, you can see my chapters a week early.
Speaking of which, my thanks to NotableRonin and Ember for being patrons!
I also have a discord sir ver for author stuff- if you have questions or comments that you'd like a more direct , that's another option: Discord - A New Way to Chat with Friends & Communities
That's about it, so read, review, enjoy, and have a nice day!
Paterfamilias
- Pronouns
- She/They
Father is not a job you can afford to just phone in to.
Just a heads up: just because a character says or thinks something doesn't mean it's true.
Also, this is not an interlude- that should be next chapter, assuming that one of the POVs doesn't up and run away from me, and it's at that point that we actually get into the nazi squishening at long last.
In the beginning, it was… well, not better, but it was manageable- Annette had always been closer to Taylor than he had been, she just understood Taylor better, and so him not being able to really relate to Taylor was something that could be worked around. Even as time went on and she grew from a tot-sized terror into a bigger bookworm and then a gawky teen, Danny let the trouble he had relating and talking to Taylor stay on the back burner. He'd get to it later, he always told himself. There'd be more time for him to think it through down the road, once he managed to start making her proud by fixing up their city. Next time he'd be able to get the ferry funding back from where it had been reassessed after yet another corporate tax cut, and then he could afford to focus on his family.
There wasn't more time.
By the time Alan and Zoe pulled him out of the bottle that he'd all but fed himself into after Annette's accident, it was already too late, and he'd destroyed any hope he'd ever had of having a decent relationship with Taylor. She inherited both his temper and his unwillingness to forget a slight, and while he may not have intended to hurt her in his grief, intent was cold comfort to a girl who may as well have lost both her parents instead of just the one, but instead of the closure of a headstone she had the stench of alcohol and bottles all over the living room, with only the Barnes to help hold her up.
After that, well, it was not excusable how Danny had hurled himself into his work to get away from the monument to his failure, the daughter that he'd driven away from him, but Danny liked to think that it was at least understandable, if no less contemptible.
As such, it was no wonder that Danny had missed the signs that Taylor was being bullied- she'd already been withdrawn, taciturn, and almost wary at home, so when he noted those traits being ramped up somewhat, he took it to be a condemnation of him and turned back to his work, hoping somehow that Zoe and Emma would keep an eye on her but too prideful to ask.
Maybe if he had, he could have cut off the situation at the knees somehow, but he hadn't, and so the first time he heard that Emma hurt Taylor worse than he ever could have was after a week in the hospital, one eye socket visibly empty even through her eyelids, in a coma he didn't know she would ever wake up from.
At first, he'd thought something was wrong when she was talking to herself and then trying to explain what had happened to him, but after a certain point his disbelief had shattered under the sheer weight of everything she was telling him- it was entirely too fantastical to be a lie, and while it was theoretically possible that someone could have been making all the things she was telling him up, it wouldn't make sense to, and the appearance of the spirit of Odin had been the tipping point as far as actual proof went. Of all the things to try and make up, a man taller than him and built like one of the bulkier employees of the DWA, old enough to be his father or perhaps even grandfather, was not something that would be on anyone's top thousand list.
The loss of Alan hurt, but his stalwart refusal to believe that Emma had anything to do with Taylor's attack was beyond the pale, and while Zoe and Anne were sympathetic, Danny wasn't willing to risk costing Taylor what support they could offer, not over Alan being an ass.
While the lawsuit was ongoing, and with Mr. Truth keeping them in close proximity, Danny let himself believe that they could start to rebuild their relationship. Indeed, Taylor was much less withdrawn than she had been before, seeming happy like she hadn't been since before Annette's death.
But afterwards… well, he fell back into the same damn pattern again. The kidnapping didn't help, of course, but in the end it all came down to him falling back on old habits that he just couldn't seem to shake no matter how much they didn't help him. Taylor's life as a hero just wasn't somewhere he could follow, no matter how hard he tried, so he fell back to the same old keeping the lights on at home, just as he had after he'd sobered up.
Now, though…
Danny had been afraid for Taylor when she'd left to help the combat efforts in Canberra, but it was a distant, abstract fear- neither of them had known that she'd end up in direct combat, and it was halfway around the world, so it was hard to view it with the kind of immediacy that something like the Empire or the Slaughterhouse attack back in the day had.
He had, however, been more afraid when the Endbringer sirens had gone off to indicate that there was an attack happening in Brockton Bay. He couldn't rely on denial to protect him there, not when he knew that Taylor was probably going to go right into fighting the Endbringer, not when he knew that he might die regardless of the fact that he made it into one of the shelters. Less than three months after waking up with her new powers, and he might have to bury her right next to Annette, and Danny knew that there would be no recovery from that, not even what little he'd clawed back after having his attitude adjusted.
Seeing her, tired but triumphant, was a relief, and a shock at the same time. Yes, she was tired… but she was also being far more open, more expressive with Victoria, her girlfriend, than she ever had been with him, almost as open as she had been with Annette, and that… that really got him thinking.
Thinking about what bridges he'd burned or had burned out from under him… and what bridges he could still build.
Well, okay, that wasn't strictly true. She had intended, truth be told, to make a nice cup of tea and add some honey (or perhaps break out Mom's old spiced hot chocolate recipe, see if that would let her have a good cry), curl up in a blanket, and just…brood ruminate over the two severely emotionally charged conversations she'd already had. Maybe, if she was feeling up to it, she might have been willing to throw together a sandwich for a late lunch before fixing herself a drink, but she was very much intent on taking the afternoon to herself to just… process.
Reality, unfortunately, was not quite so accommodating to the Chosen of the Runes in this aspect.
"Taylor, can we talk?"
Immediately, her father's words set her on edge. Even aside from the massive cliché that was the use of those words in the context of a romantic relationship, any kind of conversation where the initiator felt it necessary to get the other party to assent to it was damn sure going to be a big ask, as it were.
Mentally mourning her hypothetical hot chocolate, Taylor sighed and shuffled into the kitchen. "Let me make some tea first."
All too soon, her honeyed cup was ready, and she found herself opposite her father at the dinner table, him with a mug of coffee that did not, in fact, have any liquor in it (and Taylor mourned the fact that she thought it was necessary to check). "So, Dad," said Taylor, feeling the warmth of the tea in her hands and hearing the metal tea ball clacking against the porcelain, "what's on your mind?"
"I'm… I'm confronting some things about myself that I should have admitted earlier," he said.
Taylor frowned. She wasn't entirely sure what he was building up to, but based on his tone, it didn't seem particularly good, at least for her- the last time she remembered this particular tone, it was when he told her that her mom was dead.
"I've been a bad father to you, and I need your help to know how I can better support you going forwards."
He looked like he was expecting some sort of objection, but none came- at first, Taylor was too startled to respond to the unexpected comment, and then, she was entirely too filled with bone-deep weariness to respond verbally.
Wordlessly, Taylor threw back her tea, the entire scalding cup going down in one go, then stood up and walked into the kitchen. One boiled kettle later, she walked back out, a novelty mug that they'd bought for her mom one Mother's Day years ago big enough to dump the entire kettle into in her hand and visibly steaming.
"Okay, I need this if I'm not going to start screaming in frustration later tonight," said Taylor, setting the mug down on the table with a sound that struck fear into the hearts of water companies everywhere. "Walk me through it."
Danny, clearly taken off guard, had to take a moment to reengage his train of thought. "Right. So, you know how I fell apart after your mom died, and you know how I've been… I haven't been able to keep up with your heroism since… well. Since January." Seeing Taylor nod slowly, taking an exaggerated slurp of her tea, he continued. "And you know how I was… how I left most of the emotional work of raising you to Annette, right?"
Taylor pressed her lips together, blinking rapidly, then nodded once, a short, jerky motion.
"Alright, well, I-"
Odin manifested, holding his hand up. "Stop." The word reverberated through the room like the inside of a drum, leaving ripples in Taylor's tea and presumably Danny's coffee. "This is hurting more than it is helping. Focus less on your failings and more on your daughter, her needs and what she wants from your relationship."
Danny winced. "Right. Taylor, I haven't been- no, I will be better, better for you. Please, help me learn how?"
The Taylor of two years ago would have leapt the table and slammed into Danny in a hug, babbling out reassurances and apologies to her father. The Taylor of one year ago would have been more cautious in offering a hug to him, but the hug would have been offered nonetheless, and she would have offered what advice she could have, bringing the two back together in a more measured way. The Taylor of three months ago would have drawn Odin into the hug, and wouldn't have trusted herself to offer advice where the god's spirit could instead, bringing the three of them together even slower.
The Taylor of today took a moment to think things over, especially in the context of the morning's heart-to-hearts, then drained her mug more before standing and walking around the table.
She started to reach out to hug Danny, then froze, head snapping around to glare at an outside wall. Something was coming, something heavy and metal that was squishing the bugs that she had taken to set to patrolling in shells around her home and it wasn't slowing-
A massive tangle of metal pieces both large and small smashed through the wall, on an almost perfect collision course for Danny.
Fortunately, Taylor was there, and with one punch, she stopped the projectile, hurling shrapnel all over the room but leaving the non-parahuman unharmed in a flash of golden light that halted all of the shrapnel and splinters created from the wall. It dropped to the floor in a harsh scraping of metal on metal, then drew itself back together into a vaguely lupine shape.
"Hookwolf," said Taylor primly, one hand coming out to grab the construct by the throat and lift it off the ground, blades and hooks blunting themselves on her supernaturally durable flesh. "If my father wasn't here, then I'd accept your offer to act as a punching bag. As it stands, you will not come back into my house unless you want me to pluck you bare, carve you open, and then stake you out for the ravens."
The Nazi morphed, shifting in all of his butchershop brutality, tendrils reaching out for Taylor's remaining eye with a sound like a knife set in a washing machine, but he was too slow, and Taylor hurled him out of the house faster than he'd entered it, managing not to widen the hole he'd already smashed into the wall.
Taylor ran her hand down her face, briefly covering her good eye, then sighed. "Let me take care of this, and then we can get back to the conversation."
A brief moment of mystic exertion later, and the fragments of wall had pulled themselves together as if magnetized, sealing themselves back up into the shape of a wall and its attendant shelves and photographs to Taylor's satisfaction.
"Alright, let's talk family."
Again, I'm leaving all the more granular discussion to happen offscreen- tbh, I've put off dealing with the Empire for too long for my tastes, so here's to nudging things along.
If you want to support me as a writer, I've got me a Ko-fi (Buy Lucifra a Coffee. ko-fi.com/lucifra) and a Patreon (Lucifra | Patreon), and if you become a patron, you can see my chapters a week early.
Speaking of which, my thanks to NotableRonin and Ember for being patrons!
I also have a discord sir ver for author stuff- if you have questions or comments that you'd like a more direct , that's another option: Discord - A New Way to Chat with Friends & Communities
That's about it, so read, review, enjoy, and have a nice day!
-----
Beta'd by Firstselector, SpytheEngineer, and Kinsfire.Just a heads up: just because a character says or thinks something doesn't mean it's true.
Also, this is not an interlude- that should be next chapter, assuming that one of the POVs doesn't up and run away from me, and it's at that point that we actually get into the nazi squishening at long last.
-----
Danny Hebert had failed his daughter.In the beginning, it was… well, not better, but it was manageable- Annette had always been closer to Taylor than he had been, she just understood Taylor better, and so him not being able to really relate to Taylor was something that could be worked around. Even as time went on and she grew from a tot-sized terror into a bigger bookworm and then a gawky teen, Danny let the trouble he had relating and talking to Taylor stay on the back burner. He'd get to it later, he always told himself. There'd be more time for him to think it through down the road, once he managed to start making her proud by fixing up their city. Next time he'd be able to get the ferry funding back from where it had been reassessed after yet another corporate tax cut, and then he could afford to focus on his family.
There wasn't more time.
By the time Alan and Zoe pulled him out of the bottle that he'd all but fed himself into after Annette's accident, it was already too late, and he'd destroyed any hope he'd ever had of having a decent relationship with Taylor. She inherited both his temper and his unwillingness to forget a slight, and while he may not have intended to hurt her in his grief, intent was cold comfort to a girl who may as well have lost both her parents instead of just the one, but instead of the closure of a headstone she had the stench of alcohol and bottles all over the living room, with only the Barnes to help hold her up.
After that, well, it was not excusable how Danny had hurled himself into his work to get away from the monument to his failure, the daughter that he'd driven away from him, but Danny liked to think that it was at least understandable, if no less contemptible.
As such, it was no wonder that Danny had missed the signs that Taylor was being bullied- she'd already been withdrawn, taciturn, and almost wary at home, so when he noted those traits being ramped up somewhat, he took it to be a condemnation of him and turned back to his work, hoping somehow that Zoe and Emma would keep an eye on her but too prideful to ask.
Maybe if he had, he could have cut off the situation at the knees somehow, but he hadn't, and so the first time he heard that Emma hurt Taylor worse than he ever could have was after a week in the hospital, one eye socket visibly empty even through her eyelids, in a coma he didn't know she would ever wake up from.
At first, he'd thought something was wrong when she was talking to herself and then trying to explain what had happened to him, but after a certain point his disbelief had shattered under the sheer weight of everything she was telling him- it was entirely too fantastical to be a lie, and while it was theoretically possible that someone could have been making all the things she was telling him up, it wouldn't make sense to, and the appearance of the spirit of Odin had been the tipping point as far as actual proof went. Of all the things to try and make up, a man taller than him and built like one of the bulkier employees of the DWA, old enough to be his father or perhaps even grandfather, was not something that would be on anyone's top thousand list.
The loss of Alan hurt, but his stalwart refusal to believe that Emma had anything to do with Taylor's attack was beyond the pale, and while Zoe and Anne were sympathetic, Danny wasn't willing to risk costing Taylor what support they could offer, not over Alan being an ass.
While the lawsuit was ongoing, and with Mr. Truth keeping them in close proximity, Danny let himself believe that they could start to rebuild their relationship. Indeed, Taylor was much less withdrawn than she had been before, seeming happy like she hadn't been since before Annette's death.
But afterwards… well, he fell back into the same damn pattern again. The kidnapping didn't help, of course, but in the end it all came down to him falling back on old habits that he just couldn't seem to shake no matter how much they didn't help him. Taylor's life as a hero just wasn't somewhere he could follow, no matter how hard he tried, so he fell back to the same old keeping the lights on at home, just as he had after he'd sobered up.
Now, though…
Danny had been afraid for Taylor when she'd left to help the combat efforts in Canberra, but it was a distant, abstract fear- neither of them had known that she'd end up in direct combat, and it was halfway around the world, so it was hard to view it with the kind of immediacy that something like the Empire or the Slaughterhouse attack back in the day had.
He had, however, been more afraid when the Endbringer sirens had gone off to indicate that there was an attack happening in Brockton Bay. He couldn't rely on denial to protect him there, not when he knew that Taylor was probably going to go right into fighting the Endbringer, not when he knew that he might die regardless of the fact that he made it into one of the shelters. Less than three months after waking up with her new powers, and he might have to bury her right next to Annette, and Danny knew that there would be no recovery from that, not even what little he'd clawed back after having his attitude adjusted.
Seeing her, tired but triumphant, was a relief, and a shock at the same time. Yes, she was tired… but she was also being far more open, more expressive with Victoria, her girlfriend, than she ever had been with him, almost as open as she had been with Annette, and that… that really got him thinking.
Thinking about what bridges he'd burned or had burned out from under him… and what bridges he could still build.
-----
Taylor didn't have any particular plans for after returning home.Well, okay, that wasn't strictly true. She had intended, truth be told, to make a nice cup of tea and add some honey (or perhaps break out Mom's old spiced hot chocolate recipe, see if that would let her have a good cry), curl up in a blanket, and just…
Reality, unfortunately, was not quite so accommodating to the Chosen of the Runes in this aspect.
"Taylor, can we talk?"
Immediately, her father's words set her on edge. Even aside from the massive cliché that was the use of those words in the context of a romantic relationship, any kind of conversation where the initiator felt it necessary to get the other party to assent to it was damn sure going to be a big ask, as it were.
Mentally mourning her hypothetical hot chocolate, Taylor sighed and shuffled into the kitchen. "Let me make some tea first."
All too soon, her honeyed cup was ready, and she found herself opposite her father at the dinner table, him with a mug of coffee that did not, in fact, have any liquor in it (and Taylor mourned the fact that she thought it was necessary to check). "So, Dad," said Taylor, feeling the warmth of the tea in her hands and hearing the metal tea ball clacking against the porcelain, "what's on your mind?"
"I'm… I'm confronting some things about myself that I should have admitted earlier," he said.
Taylor frowned. She wasn't entirely sure what he was building up to, but based on his tone, it didn't seem particularly good, at least for her- the last time she remembered this particular tone, it was when he told her that her mom was dead.
"I've been a bad father to you, and I need your help to know how I can better support you going forwards."
He looked like he was expecting some sort of objection, but none came- at first, Taylor was too startled to respond to the unexpected comment, and then, she was entirely too filled with bone-deep weariness to respond verbally.
Wordlessly, Taylor threw back her tea, the entire scalding cup going down in one go, then stood up and walked into the kitchen. One boiled kettle later, she walked back out, a novelty mug that they'd bought for her mom one Mother's Day years ago big enough to dump the entire kettle into in her hand and visibly steaming.
"Okay, I need this if I'm not going to start screaming in frustration later tonight," said Taylor, setting the mug down on the table with a sound that struck fear into the hearts of water companies everywhere. "Walk me through it."
Danny, clearly taken off guard, had to take a moment to reengage his train of thought. "Right. So, you know how I fell apart after your mom died, and you know how I've been… I haven't been able to keep up with your heroism since… well. Since January." Seeing Taylor nod slowly, taking an exaggerated slurp of her tea, he continued. "And you know how I was… how I left most of the emotional work of raising you to Annette, right?"
Taylor pressed her lips together, blinking rapidly, then nodded once, a short, jerky motion.
"Alright, well, I-"
Odin manifested, holding his hand up. "Stop." The word reverberated through the room like the inside of a drum, leaving ripples in Taylor's tea and presumably Danny's coffee. "This is hurting more than it is helping. Focus less on your failings and more on your daughter, her needs and what she wants from your relationship."
Danny winced. "Right. Taylor, I haven't been- no, I will be better, better for you. Please, help me learn how?"
The Taylor of two years ago would have leapt the table and slammed into Danny in a hug, babbling out reassurances and apologies to her father. The Taylor of one year ago would have been more cautious in offering a hug to him, but the hug would have been offered nonetheless, and she would have offered what advice she could have, bringing the two back together in a more measured way. The Taylor of three months ago would have drawn Odin into the hug, and wouldn't have trusted herself to offer advice where the god's spirit could instead, bringing the three of them together even slower.
The Taylor of today took a moment to think things over, especially in the context of the morning's heart-to-hearts, then drained her mug more before standing and walking around the table.
She started to reach out to hug Danny, then froze, head snapping around to glare at an outside wall. Something was coming, something heavy and metal that was squishing the bugs that she had taken to set to patrolling in shells around her home and it wasn't slowing-
A massive tangle of metal pieces both large and small smashed through the wall, on an almost perfect collision course for Danny.
Fortunately, Taylor was there, and with one punch, she stopped the projectile, hurling shrapnel all over the room but leaving the non-parahuman unharmed in a flash of golden light that halted all of the shrapnel and splinters created from the wall. It dropped to the floor in a harsh scraping of metal on metal, then drew itself back together into a vaguely lupine shape.
"Hookwolf," said Taylor primly, one hand coming out to grab the construct by the throat and lift it off the ground, blades and hooks blunting themselves on her supernaturally durable flesh. "If my father wasn't here, then I'd accept your offer to act as a punching bag. As it stands, you will not come back into my house unless you want me to pluck you bare, carve you open, and then stake you out for the ravens."
The Nazi morphed, shifting in all of his butchershop brutality, tendrils reaching out for Taylor's remaining eye with a sound like a knife set in a washing machine, but he was too slow, and Taylor hurled him out of the house faster than he'd entered it, managing not to widen the hole he'd already smashed into the wall.
Taylor ran her hand down her face, briefly covering her good eye, then sighed. "Let me take care of this, and then we can get back to the conversation."
A brief moment of mystic exertion later, and the fragments of wall had pulled themselves together as if magnetized, sealing themselves back up into the shape of a wall and its attendant shelves and photographs to Taylor's satisfaction.
"Alright, let's talk family."
-----
And that's that!Again, I'm leaving all the more granular discussion to happen offscreen- tbh, I've put off dealing with the Empire for too long for my tastes, so here's to nudging things along.
If you want to support me as a writer, I've got me a Ko-fi (Buy Lucifra a Coffee. ko-fi.com/lucifra) and a Patreon (Lucifra | Patreon), and if you become a patron, you can see my chapters a week early.
Speaking of which, my thanks to NotableRonin and Ember for being patrons!
I also have a discord sir ver for author stuff- if you have questions or comments that you'd like a more direct , that's another option: Discord - A New Way to Chat with Friends & Communities
That's about it, so read, review, enjoy, and have a nice day!
Interlude 6
- Pronouns
- She/They
Nazis cry out for the squishening!
Content Warning: Nazi POVs and all the attendant issues there.
Even just off of the back of his power, he was hard to contend with on a physical level- between the sheer mass of metal that was there and how sharp it was, it was hard for anyone except the chink dragon to stand up to him, purely from a standpoint of "who's tough enough and strong enough to take what he can dish out and dish right back". Combining that with his experience, both before he Triggered, in the pit fights, and after, and he was one of the largest individual threats in the city, and his reputation and sheer brute power helped discourage every dumbass with a ski mask and a power (or hell, a ski mask and a gun) from making a run at the Empire.
All of this made it all the more galling that some girl could just manhandle him like so much wet lint, even if he knew that that girl had stood up to Endbringers (and him) before- doing it in civvies was just different from coming out the loser against an armored cape like Volur.
Oh, sure, Hookwolf knew in the abstract that there were threats that he didn't have a hope of standing up to. The Endbringers, the Triumvirate, hell, even that Quarrel bitch were all big names that either he couldn't touch or could feasibly put him down like the rejects from the dogfights, but at least they had the fucking balls to present themselves as the actual big names they were- even the new girl, Quarrel, she'd proved her bona fides by putting down the Butcher and then an Endbringer within a matter of hours, and the massive fucking bow was just an accent on top of that.
But some girl in her civvies chumping him that hard, without even paying enough attention to him to realize that she threw him right into Squealer's latest truck's blind spot, that stung. The druggie bint hadn't managed to kill him with the shot that had thrown him into the house, but she had slowed him down enough to escape, and with the raid on the drug den in one of his warehouses already done, that was all she needed to let the rest of the mooks get off without a scratch.
"So, let me get this straight." Clausewitz steepled his fingers, his voice carrying the air of authority that was normally Kaiser's to exert. "You failed to defend your territory against a half-wit, drug-addled whore, whose only saving grace is that she found a benefactor to hitch her disgusting trailer to in order to afford to put a tank in all but name on the streets of this good city. In fact, in the process of attempting to pursue Squealer, you ran the risk of earning our good people a reputation of being trucebreakers that we only escaped by the good fortune you had to be pursuing a bitch so drug-addled that she violated the recovery period and that our city has a cape capable of undoing the damage dealt by the former Endbringers so comprehensively that the recovery period was shortened to just two days, at which point you found yourself destroying a civilian house- not even any civilian, no, just the cape who repaired the city. The only reason you haven't found yourself in Allfather's company is the fact that she has, in all the mercy a person like that can hold in their heart, decided not to pursue your head."
Hookwolf winced. "Well, when you say it like that, then it sounds bad."
Clausewitz leaned forwards over the desk that was separating them. "That is the intent, yes- Kaiser has charged me with driving home the magnitude of your choices and their consequences, and these are indeed weighty choices."
"So what, you're just gonna beat my ass until I apologize or some shit like that?" Hookwolf didn't really think that would happen, but one way or the other it would get a response from the egghead, and that was the important thing.
"No, I shall be putting your talents to use in a more… appropriate manner as we strive to rectify the problems you have caused our organization. You may go, until I have need of you in a more direct capacity, at which time I will reach out to you myself." Hookwolf was tempted to take a swing at Clausewitz for his arrogance, like he'd have handled Squealer driving through his wall any better, but he held onto his temper, banking it for another occasion.
"Sure," he spat, turning and slouching out of the room that the man liked to call his office. He'd done that song and dance before, and he knew that, for as much of an ass as Clausewitz was, he'd find some way to make his petty personal grievance serve the best interests of the Empire.
As long as he served the cause, all could be forgiven.
Not that the situation wasn't already precarious, but it was precarious in a manner that Clausewitz planned for- something that he wasn't half bad at, if he did say so himself, especially with his brother to help cover for his blind spots. For as treacherous as the Butcher was, as fraught a plan as applying both his and his brother's talents against the PRT and New Wave to handicap the fools, those were all things that he'd planned for and could predict the responses to, which opened up the door to his own countermoves that would keep them in the game even if someone thought they could maneuver the Empire into checkmate.
Having such a powerful cape as Volur feel targeted by the Empire by what was essentially random chance, especially when she had enough favors to call in to crush them, was another matter entirely.
He couldn't entirely fault Hookwolf for the situation- Squealer was a Tinker, yes, but she'd been of such middling performance that neither him nor the rest of the Empire could have predicted such a bold strike from her, let alone that it would be so successful. Indeed, it was only Othala's aid that prevented them from losing any manpower to go along with the weapons and drugs she'd denied them in the raid, and Taylor Hebert was a personal project, so he hadn't put her address into the wider Empire awareness as a location of a potential recruitment target.
Still, it was clear that, one way or the other, that could not stand. Too much had changed of late, in the last 48 hours alone, for him to afford to stagnate in his plans.
Taylor Hebert could no longer be recruited in the conventional sense, if that had ever truly been a possibility. Even if he had managed to control the situation well enough to present her with situations that would entangle them more closely together, her dalliance with Victoria Dallon of New Wave made it clear that she would not be someone he could recruit with conventional methods.
Nor could he recruit her through the mechanism of his power. Both Hebert and the Dallon girl were immune to the short-term aspects of his power, and as much as he believed in the effect of the longer-term side of his power to break through even their formidable wills, he needed his shorter-term power to keep them around for long enough for said power to reeducate them, and while he'd managed to ply his trade well at Winslow where he could rely on the rules and regulations of the educational system to bind his conscripts, neither of the girls would be within his reach any time soon with the transfer that Arcadia had offered the Heberts.
Ah, well, he'd be able to at least work with whatever capes Gesellschaft decided to offer in exchange for such a potent ability.
Their brainwashing programs (or, if push came to shove, breeding programs) were far and away superior to anything he'd seen or heard of in America, even when taking factions like the Herren Clans or the Fallen and all their Masters into consideration.
Their masterpieces, like Night and Fog, far outshone what measly work he'd been able to put into the likes of Hookwolf- he'd merely leashed a rabid animal, they had torn apart two degenerate crossdressers and in their place built up respectable members of society who could be trusted to kill their depraved friends with their bare hands as their first acts of repentance for their sins.
Yes, Gesellschaft would be able to rehabilitate the two degenerates far better than he could, and the only obstacle to that was their capture and delivery, which was something he was far more equipped for. With New Wave in shambles and the Protectorate already disrupted by the director's reaction to Hebert, he only had to contend with their own resistance, with perhaps a token chance of external issues, nothing he hadn't overcome before. He'd even managed to convince Kaiser to make a strike against the ABB, especially in the wake of their alleged dragon's refusal to stand against the Endbringers- while they did lose Stormtiger in the Endbringer battle, they were seen standing and fighting in the figurative trenches to defend their city, and had the victory to ride the crest of.
All this to say that, if all went well, he would be able to sweep many obstacles off of the path to the Empire's conquest of the city.
He raised the phone on his desk, dialing in a number from memory. "Purity, my friend, it is time. Lung is in the shopping mall. Begin your attack run."
She had had the good fortune of her husband not dying of violent means (heart failure was, for all the tragedy of the means, not something that was inflicted on her Flavius by anyone who she could put a face to), and being able to live in the house that was paid off by his life insurance, but that didn't stop little David Dwight Gaul from growing up without ever having seen his father's face.
Still, life had to go on, and today, that meant going to the mall. David's clothes weren't going to buy themselves, unfortunately.
After entirely too much time cajoling a fussing baby into the stroller, she could finally get into the building, and hopefully things would go well.
The store was, unfortunately, busier than she'd hoped, but she made it through, and after a line that she thought was too long for just two days after an Endbringer attack, she decided to go to Baskin-Robbins for a little treat.
There, too, the line was onerously long, and David was starting to fuss far before she got to the register, but by a stroke of luck, the burly man in front of her in line turned around and started letting David play with his finger before she could wrangle the bags into the storage area under the stroller, to the point where after they'd gotten their ice cream (rainbow sherbert for the man, who introduced himself as Kenta Tatsuma, and rocky road for Cleo), they accompanied each other to the same table.
"...thank you so much for the help, Mr. Kenta," she said, setting her cup down and maneuvering the stroller around to where David could see both of him. "I've been trying, but… well, ever since my Flavius passed, I've been overwhelmed, and as much as I love little David, having him really hasn't helped me get back on my feet especially with how much my mother-in-law hates me for 'stealing away her darling baby boy' from someone of the 'right sort'." She made air quotes around the last.
Kenta snorted, finger still clutched in David's brown little fist. "Someone like that," he said, "isn't worth the title of mother.
"Preaching to the choir on that one," said Cleo, hands coming up, "but he loved her and wasn't willing or able to acknowledge how much of a bitch she was. Half the time I'm astounded he was even a functional human being instead of a goose-stepping little-"
She was interrupted by the grinding of metal against metal. Anyone in Brockton Bay knew to get down and look around for a source, and these two were no exception- both of them dropped their ice cream and moved, with Kenta's head swiveling around to the blades rising up to block off the food court's exit in contrast to Cleo all but hurling herself to cover David.
There was a deep, thrumming boom, and a flash of blinding light, and part of the roof caved in, spilling rubble all across the foyer of the movie theater appended to the food court and revealing the incandescent form of Purity, hovering in the sky like an avenging angel.
"People of Brockton Bay," came the hollow, booming voice of Kaiser as he planted himself in front of the blocked-off exit. "For too long has this city been menaced by the so-called 'community service organization' that is the Azn Bad Boys. I come here, today, to put an end to this villainous organization myself, by slaying the dragon whose cupidity and avarice demands no less than the complete rule over this fair city." Disdain fairly dripped off of his voice, somehow harmonizing with the sound of his armor creaking as he took an imperious stance that gave the impression that he was looking down his nose at them like so many disobedient children. "Kenta Tatsuma," he said, weightily, "come to your death with dignity and spare the people of this city the damage that another of your rampages will cause.
Instead of the dismay that she was expecting to feel at realizing that she'd let Lung within reach of her child, Cleo was filled with fury- not at Kenta, but at Kaiser, for putting her baby's life in danger.
"Kick his ass," she snarled, unbuckling David from the stroller so she could take him and run.
Kenta startled, heat rising from his body, almost as if he'd forgotten she was there, then turned to a boy no older than fifteen at another table. "Get her and her child out of here. If the little emperor wishes to court death, I can oblige him."
The boy nodded, then gestured, sweeping up Cleo in his wake as they melted into the crowd.
The last she saw of Kenta before the boy guided her out of the room was the man glaring at Kaiser, eyes glowing and shirt ripping off of his scale-studded torso.
It is, finally, Nazi squishening time. You may now rejoice.
If you want to support me as a writer, I've got me a Ko-fi (Buy Lucifra a Coffee. ko-fi.com/lucifra) and a Patreon (Lucifra | Patreon), and if you become a patron, you can see my chapters a week early, plus for this fic see two chapters not available on other platforms yet.
Speaking of which, my thanks to NotableRonin and Ember for being patrons!
I also have a discord sir ver for author stuff- if you have questions or comments that you'd like a more direct , that's another option: Discord - A New Way to Chat with Friends & Communities
That's about it, so read, review, enjoy, and have a nice day!
-----
Beta'd by Firstselector, SpytheEngineer, and Kinsfire.Content Warning: Nazi POVs and all the attendant issues there.
-----
Hookwolf was not a man accustomed to defeat.Even just off of the back of his power, he was hard to contend with on a physical level- between the sheer mass of metal that was there and how sharp it was, it was hard for anyone except the chink dragon to stand up to him, purely from a standpoint of "who's tough enough and strong enough to take what he can dish out and dish right back". Combining that with his experience, both before he Triggered, in the pit fights, and after, and he was one of the largest individual threats in the city, and his reputation and sheer brute power helped discourage every dumbass with a ski mask and a power (or hell, a ski mask and a gun) from making a run at the Empire.
All of this made it all the more galling that some girl could just manhandle him like so much wet lint, even if he knew that that girl had stood up to Endbringers (and him) before- doing it in civvies was just different from coming out the loser against an armored cape like Volur.
Oh, sure, Hookwolf knew in the abstract that there were threats that he didn't have a hope of standing up to. The Endbringers, the Triumvirate, hell, even that Quarrel bitch were all big names that either he couldn't touch or could feasibly put him down like the rejects from the dogfights, but at least they had the fucking balls to present themselves as the actual big names they were- even the new girl, Quarrel, she'd proved her bona fides by putting down the Butcher and then an Endbringer within a matter of hours, and the massive fucking bow was just an accent on top of that.
But some girl in her civvies chumping him that hard, without even paying enough attention to him to realize that she threw him right into Squealer's latest truck's blind spot, that stung. The druggie bint hadn't managed to kill him with the shot that had thrown him into the house, but she had slowed him down enough to escape, and with the raid on the drug den in one of his warehouses already done, that was all she needed to let the rest of the mooks get off without a scratch.
"So, let me get this straight." Clausewitz steepled his fingers, his voice carrying the air of authority that was normally Kaiser's to exert. "You failed to defend your territory against a half-wit, drug-addled whore, whose only saving grace is that she found a benefactor to hitch her disgusting trailer to in order to afford to put a tank in all but name on the streets of this good city. In fact, in the process of attempting to pursue Squealer, you ran the risk of earning our good people a reputation of being trucebreakers that we only escaped by the good fortune you had to be pursuing a bitch so drug-addled that she violated the recovery period and that our city has a cape capable of undoing the damage dealt by the former Endbringers so comprehensively that the recovery period was shortened to just two days, at which point you found yourself destroying a civilian house- not even any civilian, no, just the cape who repaired the city. The only reason you haven't found yourself in Allfather's company is the fact that she has, in all the mercy a person like that can hold in their heart, decided not to pursue your head."
Hookwolf winced. "Well, when you say it like that, then it sounds bad."
Clausewitz leaned forwards over the desk that was separating them. "That is the intent, yes- Kaiser has charged me with driving home the magnitude of your choices and their consequences, and these are indeed weighty choices."
"So what, you're just gonna beat my ass until I apologize or some shit like that?" Hookwolf didn't really think that would happen, but one way or the other it would get a response from the egghead, and that was the important thing.
"No, I shall be putting your talents to use in a more… appropriate manner as we strive to rectify the problems you have caused our organization. You may go, until I have need of you in a more direct capacity, at which time I will reach out to you myself." Hookwolf was tempted to take a swing at Clausewitz for his arrogance, like he'd have handled Squealer driving through his wall any better, but he held onto his temper, banking it for another occasion.
"Sure," he spat, turning and slouching out of the room that the man liked to call his office. He'd done that song and dance before, and he knew that, for as much of an ass as Clausewitz was, he'd find some way to make his petty personal grievance serve the best interests of the Empire.
As long as he served the cause, all could be forgiven.
-----
Hookwolf had very nearly ruined everything.Not that the situation wasn't already precarious, but it was precarious in a manner that Clausewitz planned for- something that he wasn't half bad at, if he did say so himself, especially with his brother to help cover for his blind spots. For as treacherous as the Butcher was, as fraught a plan as applying both his and his brother's talents against the PRT and New Wave to handicap the fools, those were all things that he'd planned for and could predict the responses to, which opened up the door to his own countermoves that would keep them in the game even if someone thought they could maneuver the Empire into checkmate.
Having such a powerful cape as Volur feel targeted by the Empire by what was essentially random chance, especially when she had enough favors to call in to crush them, was another matter entirely.
He couldn't entirely fault Hookwolf for the situation- Squealer was a Tinker, yes, but she'd been of such middling performance that neither him nor the rest of the Empire could have predicted such a bold strike from her, let alone that it would be so successful. Indeed, it was only Othala's aid that prevented them from losing any manpower to go along with the weapons and drugs she'd denied them in the raid, and Taylor Hebert was a personal project, so he hadn't put her address into the wider Empire awareness as a location of a potential recruitment target.
Still, it was clear that, one way or the other, that could not stand. Too much had changed of late, in the last 48 hours alone, for him to afford to stagnate in his plans.
Taylor Hebert could no longer be recruited in the conventional sense, if that had ever truly been a possibility. Even if he had managed to control the situation well enough to present her with situations that would entangle them more closely together, her dalliance with Victoria Dallon of New Wave made it clear that she would not be someone he could recruit with conventional methods.
Nor could he recruit her through the mechanism of his power. Both Hebert and the Dallon girl were immune to the short-term aspects of his power, and as much as he believed in the effect of the longer-term side of his power to break through even their formidable wills, he needed his shorter-term power to keep them around for long enough for said power to reeducate them, and while he'd managed to ply his trade well at Winslow where he could rely on the rules and regulations of the educational system to bind his conscripts, neither of the girls would be within his reach any time soon with the transfer that Arcadia had offered the Heberts.
Ah, well, he'd be able to at least work with whatever capes Gesellschaft decided to offer in exchange for such a potent ability.
Their brainwashing programs (or, if push came to shove, breeding programs) were far and away superior to anything he'd seen or heard of in America, even when taking factions like the Herren Clans or the Fallen and all their Masters into consideration.
Their masterpieces, like Night and Fog, far outshone what measly work he'd been able to put into the likes of Hookwolf- he'd merely leashed a rabid animal, they had torn apart two degenerate crossdressers and in their place built up respectable members of society who could be trusted to kill their depraved friends with their bare hands as their first acts of repentance for their sins.
Yes, Gesellschaft would be able to rehabilitate the two degenerates far better than he could, and the only obstacle to that was their capture and delivery, which was something he was far more equipped for. With New Wave in shambles and the Protectorate already disrupted by the director's reaction to Hebert, he only had to contend with their own resistance, with perhaps a token chance of external issues, nothing he hadn't overcome before. He'd even managed to convince Kaiser to make a strike against the ABB, especially in the wake of their alleged dragon's refusal to stand against the Endbringers- while they did lose Stormtiger in the Endbringer battle, they were seen standing and fighting in the figurative trenches to defend their city, and had the victory to ride the crest of.
All this to say that, if all went well, he would be able to sweep many obstacles off of the path to the Empire's conquest of the city.
He raised the phone on his desk, dialing in a number from memory. "Purity, my friend, it is time. Lung is in the shopping mall. Begin your attack run."
-----
Cleo Gaul wasn't particularly special, by the standards of Brockton Bay- working single mothers weren't, unfortunately, that rare in the context of the sociopolitical situation in Brockton Bay.She had had the good fortune of her husband not dying of violent means (heart failure was, for all the tragedy of the means, not something that was inflicted on her Flavius by anyone who she could put a face to), and being able to live in the house that was paid off by his life insurance, but that didn't stop little David Dwight Gaul from growing up without ever having seen his father's face.
Still, life had to go on, and today, that meant going to the mall. David's clothes weren't going to buy themselves, unfortunately.
After entirely too much time cajoling a fussing baby into the stroller, she could finally get into the building, and hopefully things would go well.
The store was, unfortunately, busier than she'd hoped, but she made it through, and after a line that she thought was too long for just two days after an Endbringer attack, she decided to go to Baskin-Robbins for a little treat.
There, too, the line was onerously long, and David was starting to fuss far before she got to the register, but by a stroke of luck, the burly man in front of her in line turned around and started letting David play with his finger before she could wrangle the bags into the storage area under the stroller, to the point where after they'd gotten their ice cream (rainbow sherbert for the man, who introduced himself as Kenta Tatsuma, and rocky road for Cleo), they accompanied each other to the same table.
"...thank you so much for the help, Mr. Kenta," she said, setting her cup down and maneuvering the stroller around to where David could see both of him. "I've been trying, but… well, ever since my Flavius passed, I've been overwhelmed, and as much as I love little David, having him really hasn't helped me get back on my feet especially with how much my mother-in-law hates me for 'stealing away her darling baby boy' from someone of the 'right sort'." She made air quotes around the last.
Kenta snorted, finger still clutched in David's brown little fist. "Someone like that," he said, "isn't worth the title of mother.
"Preaching to the choir on that one," said Cleo, hands coming up, "but he loved her and wasn't willing or able to acknowledge how much of a bitch she was. Half the time I'm astounded he was even a functional human being instead of a goose-stepping little-"
She was interrupted by the grinding of metal against metal. Anyone in Brockton Bay knew to get down and look around for a source, and these two were no exception- both of them dropped their ice cream and moved, with Kenta's head swiveling around to the blades rising up to block off the food court's exit in contrast to Cleo all but hurling herself to cover David.
There was a deep, thrumming boom, and a flash of blinding light, and part of the roof caved in, spilling rubble all across the foyer of the movie theater appended to the food court and revealing the incandescent form of Purity, hovering in the sky like an avenging angel.
"People of Brockton Bay," came the hollow, booming voice of Kaiser as he planted himself in front of the blocked-off exit. "For too long has this city been menaced by the so-called 'community service organization' that is the Azn Bad Boys. I come here, today, to put an end to this villainous organization myself, by slaying the dragon whose cupidity and avarice demands no less than the complete rule over this fair city." Disdain fairly dripped off of his voice, somehow harmonizing with the sound of his armor creaking as he took an imperious stance that gave the impression that he was looking down his nose at them like so many disobedient children. "Kenta Tatsuma," he said, weightily, "come to your death with dignity and spare the people of this city the damage that another of your rampages will cause.
Instead of the dismay that she was expecting to feel at realizing that she'd let Lung within reach of her child, Cleo was filled with fury- not at Kenta, but at Kaiser, for putting her baby's life in danger.
"Kick his ass," she snarled, unbuckling David from the stroller so she could take him and run.
Kenta startled, heat rising from his body, almost as if he'd forgotten she was there, then turned to a boy no older than fifteen at another table. "Get her and her child out of here. If the little emperor wishes to court death, I can oblige him."
The boy nodded, then gestured, sweeping up Cleo in his wake as they melted into the crowd.
The last she saw of Kenta before the boy guided her out of the room was the man glaring at Kaiser, eyes glowing and shirt ripping off of his scale-studded torso.
-----
And that's that!It is, finally, Nazi squishening time. You may now rejoice.
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- Location
- Earth
What was your plan Kaiser? Act like you're that guy and maybe you could take out a guy that keeps getting stronger the longer a fight goes on before it was impossible?
Also also, way to just blow someone's secret identity all up, dude. I know you're ignorant and inbred, but still. Have some class, or at least fake it like your wife faked every "tender moment" with you.
Boom got em.
Also also, way to just blow someone's secret identity all up, dude. I know you're ignorant and inbred, but still. Have some class, or at least fake it like your wife faked every "tender moment" with you.
Boom got em.
Hexcalibur
Not So Ordinary Sword
- Location
- Somewhere
- Pronouns
- It
Attacking a crowded mall and breaking the unwritten rules atop of it. With Gladly on their rolls the E88 became more daring.
Hopefully this attack will blow up on their face. But knowing that Gladly has already influenced part of New Wave and the PRT/Protectorate, anyone striking back at them will probably be shown in a negative light.
Hopefully this attack will blow up on their face. But knowing that Gladly has already influenced part of New Wave and the PRT/Protectorate, anyone striking back at them will probably be shown in a negative light.
PrognosticHannya
Far Too Enthusiastic About Etymology
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Who's he influenced?
Sandy River DL
(Verified Destroyer Leader)
- Location
- Lake Michigan
- Pronouns
- Her/She
Carol for sure, and I'm pretty certain he's also gotten Dean.