- Location
- Madison, AL
Lovely, and I hope her singing was recorded!
- Location
- Somewhere
On one hand... Tay is keeping her safe.
But on the other hand... does this count as passive-aggressive psychological torture?
But on the other hand... does this count as passive-aggressive psychological torture?
globalwarmth
ruining the weather.
- Location
- Polar ice caps
I hope when they meet she slaps Taylor's face before hugging. You don't leave someone in solitary that long!
On the brighter side she's sorta getting a closer relationship with her shard. Less headaches too if her casual conversational use of powers is an indicator.
On the brighter side she's sorta getting a closer relationship with her shard. Less headaches too if her casual conversational use of powers is an indicator.
- Location
- Everett
Wow, she unintentionally tortured someone through near total social isolation, and then let said person run free in the city. I can't even begin to express my disappointment in her decision making abilities right now. Her, and her father.
DragoNT
Hater of Plot Devices
- Location
- Australia
Its Taylor what did you expect?, as for Danny why would care about someone who could potently hurt his daughter?.
- Location
- Somewhere
Beyogi
and a fairy
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Yeah this is pretty fucked up. But then Taylor never showed any compulsions against bullying other people in canon so eh. Can't say I'm surprised.
- Location
- USA
But can this even be called "bullying," though? I mean, she's a near-resourceless Tinker with almost no support structure, trying to help a confessed supervillain that might or might not have been coerced. What else could she do? Invite Lisa into her home? The isolation is obviously not ideal, but at least she's honestly trying to help.
- Location
- Somewhere
globalwarmth
ruining the weather.
- Location
- Polar ice caps
Also it's not as bad as it could be. Lisa obviously gets that her captor is honestly trying their best. Any other cape would be holding twice as much resentment towards Taylor than the one that can literally read the good intentions as clear as her.
Plus it's like boot camp for Lisa. See is getting better at ignoring the TMI problem by eating sewage shipped food, by the end of it she'll be ready for love.
- Location
- Somewhere
Also it's not as bad as it could be. Lisa obviously gets that her captor is honestly trying their best. Any other cape would be holding twice as much resentment towards Taylor than the one that can literally read the good intentions as clear as her.
Plus it's like boot camp for Lisa. See is getting better at ignoring the TMI problem by eating sewage shipped food, by the end of it she'll be ready for love.
TayxLisa... ship it.
Now... if only we could get Amy in the Ship as well....
There is a pretty obvious solution to all of this, has Lisa leave town and turn herself in at a PRT headquarter in a city far enough away that Coil don´t have moles there. He can´t have moles everywhere.
- Location
- Somewhere
That's your choice. Honestly I'm here for good stories.
Not moles, but he can have a hitman go to any city. Taylor's purposes require she be turned in as Tattletale the criminal thinker. And Tattletale can't assume that the PRT anywhere is going to listen to her about the moles Coil does have, not to the extent of not communicating with Piggot. Meaning Coil will know. The PRT could do all sorts of things to protect her, but there's no way to know how much she can talk them into fast enough.
- Location
- Earth
So, I'm mostly glad this chapter got such an invested response. I won't be responding to you guys individually, and I hope you don't mind that.
This selection of quotes covered a lot of ground. Just a few comments on my end. Solitary confinement has been and is still used both as a punishment and to protect prisoners (usually from other prisoners, but also in cases where suicide is considered plausible). I'm not saying it's ok, I'm in fact not making any personal commentary on it at all. Danny is aware that putting people in solitary confinement is a thing that routinely occurs, and Taylor has at least heard of it. Both of them, in their own thoughts, don't think of what they're doing to Lisa as solitary confinement. At least prior to this update. Surprised? Well, Lisa wasn't in the Shipwreck Lair for longer than 20 min before she knew they were willing to send her on to the Protectorate Rig. Taylor doesn't consider herself to be 'confining' Lisa at all. From Taylor's perspective, she's protecting Lisa from Coil. Danny is a lot less charitable. He's keeping Lisa at arm's length to protect his kid. Lisa intentionally sought out Taylor, possibly exposing her to Coil's attention. Lisa is perfectly aware that Coil is an amoral bastard and she chose to risk Taylor's safety in the hopes of benefiting herself. Danny isn't unsympathetic, but he's definitely got priorities. The first one being taking care of Taylor, who is completely innocent. A much more distant second is trying to help a young woman who certainly wasn't kidnapped from the Wards or the Protectorate. Danny is not certain Lisa was a villain before Coil picked her up, but he's pretty sure there were no heroes of Lisa's description. That doesn't make her a bad person, but it's a definite lack of evidence that she's a good person.
Furthermore, both of them are trying to take care of Lisa. This is limited to sending her books along with the basics, but the Hebert household has to budget to ensure it can feed two people, and now Lisa needs food as well. While it's reasonable for some of you readers to disagree with him, in Danny's opinion, he simply can't trust Lisa's abilities or motivations. As for Taylor, In the time leading up to her trigger, which was similar to Worm Canon in the intensity of harassment, she would have cried tears of gratitude to be told she was being sent away from her life to live alone for a couple of months with food and books. A couple of weeks with books and no people would have been a smaller scale fantasy come true, even if it was just as unattainable for her.
Lisa feels trapped, but a big part of that is due to Coil. Lisa is running around in tinkertech power armor. She could leave Danny and Taylor pretty easily. That ease of abandonment is why Danny thought this was a good test. There's a saying, 'If you love something, set it free', Danny only wants to keep helping Lisa for as long as Lisa wants to be there more than she wants to be not his problem.
Lisa didn't figure out Coil's power before Taylor rescued her. Lisa isn't sure that Coil can't find her anywhere she runs. Her power tells her that Coil is completely confident that he could have her killed if she went to the PRT. She's not sure if that's limited to the Brockton Bay PRT, or the PRT as a whole. Lisa knows that Coil would try to kill her if he believed she was going to spill his secrets, and she's not eager to find out how long his reach extends from the city.
Lisa's feelings on Taylor and Danny are complicated. A large part of that is because she's having trouble getting a good read on their intentions for her in their communications, but supplies they send are packed personally and with goodwill towards her. The Heberts are being very careful in what they tell Lisa, but they're not being as careful in how they treat her. As such, Lisa isn't sure their good intentions won't get her dead, but she's pretty sure they'd feel bad about it if they got her hurt or killed. Lisa isn't sure how much she can push 'this Tinker and his associate', so she's trying to ignore the stress it puts on her due to a lack any sort of social stimulus.
Lisa's power is questioning if she remains a viable host under these conditions. If it turns out she's not, the shard might as well pull a Leet on her by trying to get her killed, so it can cut its losses. This is like stress testing. Either Lisa gets better at using her power, and providing useful information, or eventually the stress gets her killed. Either way, it's win-win, at least for the shard.
It's not for nothing, it's for suspense, drama, and excitement!
I had to quote this because it resonated so well with Lisa's chasing of Edward the Epic, a fish that makes a single appearance in the story.
Thank you
I had no issues writing this chapter. It underwent a couple rounds of refinement, but the initial draft was comedic, and it was only in later revisions that the undertones came out in full. By then it was nearly done.
It was, and Taylor will have to manually edit it out to get the actual data she wanted. Namely, the relative stealthiness of the powersuit and the amount of noise it makes. However, since she has this recording, she'll decide to show it to her dad in case he's interested in how weird Lisa behaves.
Yeah, if Coil picked up Lisa, there's almost no disguise that Taylor can make at present that wouldn't blow apart their entire cover story.
I'm not sure if I should be surprised that it took over 7 pages for shipping to pop up, or disappointed in SV's reputation taking so long to be fulfilled.
Suffice it to say:
The magic 8 ball responds with 'No.' to the first time Taylor asks somebody if they're interested in her.
- Location
- Elsewhere
You could also say this is a hazard of her choice of help.
She deliberately sought out a Tinker for the express reason that "they are good at keeping a low profile" but now she's realizing that "completely unknown Tinker" can also mean "low-budget, small tool-set, untested equipment, and paranoid."
3.4 Like Friends
- Location
- Earth
3.4 Like Friends
The second test of the version 2 power suit had gone perhaps even better than the first. And Tattletale had picked up a few guns. After her binge eating of hot food as a reward for the mission, I was starting to feel fairly guilty about not getting her some kind of oven. She had used all the ammo firing at various plates of armor I'd made. I wasn't hoping she'd get shot, but if she kept her effectiveness up, the gangs might try something. She had knocked over two safehouses and I hadn't done any science on even handguns and shotguns.
She also wanted better ways to distribute capsaicin, the current 'hot grenades' needed a launcher.
Also, dad had done a weird turnaround after listening to my recordings on the armor function. I had put a recorder on the armor internal and external, as a test to check the sound dampening. He was now saying that we should let her socialize with somebody, even if it wasn't us.
I wasn't so sure. Tattletale seemed happy wearing the armor, but I wasn't sure that was a good idea. Last night, she had raided another safehouse by leaping from a building across an alley, and directly into the money storage room. The suit memory indicated that she'd tumbled awkwardly, but jumped up, yelled "surprise bitches", threw hot grenades all over, and then thrown everyone out of the room. The concerning part was that after launching the grenades, she's started cackling until she was wheezing with laughter. She'd eventually used the grapple hook to return to the roof across the alley with the loot. She then talked to herself about 'real food' while throwing the loot into the bay for the squiggles to pick up.
"So, Tattletale was a villain, are you sure she needs some friends." I opened up the conversation with dad while we were reviewing on Saturday. I didn't want to her to like drop a hot grenade on somebody for laughs.
Dad was also concerned. "Yeah, even if she was faking, I can't see a real reason for it, if she knows we heard her, then that's not going to convince me to want to reveal anything about myself. If she wanted to run, well, she could get to anywhere in the city before the suit ran out of juice. I'm pretty sure, Taylor, that she is just starved for conversation."
He hesitated a bit then started again. "I'm pretty sure that in prison putting somebody in solitary for a while is an additional sort of punishment. Maybe we could find a warehouse she could switch to using as a primary base, and we could get her some internet at least? Or tv?"
"The Undersiders haven't been in the news much recently, do you think we should still worry about them and her?"
"She says Coil grabbed her out of the blue, with no warning. If she starts going out again in her civilian ID, I would think the exact same thing would happen again. The other Undersiders I'm less sure about to be honest. If she wanted to go talk to them, she could have."
"We could find an abandoned warehouse that is also above one of the storm drain pipes that goes straight to the bay. I can't make tunnels very well yet, but I can make one that goes straight up. If it's close enough to the docks we can even get wifi internet from a random company, maybe, but either way, getting some sort of fresh air would be good for her and it would be a lot easier to get her electricity."
"OK, let's ask her about that when we send along food tomorrow. Maybe she'll have some ideas as well."
Getting down to the docks every day was an extra chore for dad, but he managed, and I helped by preparing food. I'd make a big batch of pasta salad tomorrow morning, and the three of us would get that for dinner, and some of our lunches for the week. Tattletale got a lot of leftovers, sandwiches, cereal, and iced teas generally.
On Sunday, if a letter could scream excitedly, Tattletale's would have. She was super eager to get back on dry land permanently. I had thought that both her lair and the new escape lair for dad and I out in the bay were at least comfortable. I suppose some people are more social than me though. She also wanted storm drain maps, to try and mark out areas that might be good locations to look for buildings, and she volunteered do a reconnaissance during armor testing for that week.
I marked out all the drains, and major sewers as well, on a map of the bay, focusing the docks and warehouses, but also including downtown and some of the more commercial and residential areas that were a major part of the E88. I then mailed it to Tattletale and closed up for the day.
Monday was cold and damp. Tattletale was on a fairly shifted sleep schedule. She'd start looking for a base on land this evening around 9, and continue until about 5 am. I had really liked her suggested plan to harvest Squealer's workshop. I needed to plan how actually do the harvesting though. I'd need hours, close to ten, even if I brought nearly all my units, assuming Squealer mostly worked with metal. Maybe if I fill the building with some kind of foam? I could make some ants that could cut passages through the foam to the goods? Then again, the Merchants could just drive out while I was pumping foam and I'd miss all the vehicles. Tattletale hadn't liked my flamethrower idea, but maybe she would like a glue thrower?
Yikes, I'm running late. I hurriedly finished getting ready for school and ran out to catch the bus down the block.
I made my bus and got to school. The morning classes were good, and I hadn't had to worry about lunch for a while as well. Occasionally somebody would use a spot where I normally sat, maybe because their usual spot was full, but Sophia's group left me alone. I could read or study, and it was a lot better than things had been. Today though I had to go to the library after I ate, and get a coding book. My website transfer project had a strong start, but I had lagged on it recently, mostly because I was afraid to use it to ask the cape questions I wanted, and so it was currently useless to me.
The school library was oddly full. While midterms were coming up, I guess my time at Winslow had led me to expect mostly slacking from the students. I got my programming book and looked for a table, and grumbled at the kids who just scattered stuff everywhere, hogging space.
Oh, Amy is here, and has space. I guess I can find out how much sincerity was in that group apology that was delivered by their redhead friend.
"Hi Amy, I'm sorry to bother you, but if you don't mind, could I use some of the table?"
She looks up at me, looks around, and says "Sure, that would be fine, Taylor." and immediately goes back to her reading.
Yeah, I'm content with that. I sit down and crack my book. I've got about 20 min to take notes on why javascript should die in a fire, or how I can fix the parsing error due to timing out of events of copied web pages with live information. Either way, I'm not feeling picky at the moment.
I don't quite finish, but it's enough, and I don't need to check out the book. I can find the rest online in class this afternoon.
I guess I should try to be nice. "Hey Amy, thanks for sharing the table."
"It's fine, don't worry about it. Hey, do you have a minute?" She's not happy, smug, or angry, so maybe she's not hostile.
"Uh, OK. Did you want something?"
"What is your history with Sophia?"
Uh, what? I sort of stare dumbly before giving my brain a mental shake. "You sit together, why are you asking me instead of her?"
"I'm asking you because Sophia's bitch. I figured even if you fed me another line of bull, it'd be different than hers, and I already talk to her occasionally. A variety of bullshit isn't exactly the spice of life, but hey it's what I get while I'm here."
Well, that's an answer that raises even more questions, but I guess if today is brutal honesty day: "Sophia, and another girl, Emma, who was my best friend up until high school, bullied me all freshman year. Knocking me over, insults, ruining my homework, they even somehow managed to steal my textbooks from my locker several times and trash them. I did everything I could to get out of Winslow and away from them. Then, surprise, Sophia is here too."
I pause at that, and narrate the tangent, "The odd thing is that she liked Winslow, that dump, because she could do whatever she wanted. I've no idea how she even got into Arcadia, much less why she wanted to come."
Amy isn't really expressive, but she folded her hands in her lap and got sort of rigid while I was talking. I guess she was hoping her bitchy friend wasn't also an ass. Bleah, these kids are weird.
Before I think things through, I start talking for no good reason. "Why are you friends with Sophia? I mean at Winslow, Sophia was pretty much only friends with Emma. Emma was all social and stuff, and she had a ton of sycophants, but Sophia ignored most people except to shove or trip or punch them. I'm willing to believe Amy is a different kind of person than Panacea, but still, what part of you likes to be around Sophia? Is she actually nice?"
Amy pauses for a moment, then says, "I'm with Vicky, she cycles between dating Dean, or hating him, and either way, can't let him be away from her, and Dean has some job or something that he shares with Sophia."
"I've never seen Sophia interested in anything other than hurting people, being better than people, or being violent. I guess she liked track, or at least she kept doing it. What kind of job does she have?"
"I dunno, I don't give a shit. Maybe it's filing or something. It's not like she has to like a job to want to get enough money to support her puppy eating habits."
I start giggling, I can't help myself. A moment later Amy snorts in amusement noise as well.
"Yeah, so sorry again about Vicky by the way, she gets blunt sometimes. Brandish tore into her though, after what she did, and she's honestly trying to be better about it."
And since I was happy, how about we talk about the time I was so terrified I humiliated myself in public. "Oh, that's good then, I guess."
Amy doesn't appear actually sympathetic, but she's not looking cruel either. "Yeah, it sucked for you, but nobody talked about it."
She sighs and then starts again. "I'm not uh saying what I mean here, uh, fuck, just don't expect people to know. We're not spreading it around, we're honestly not horrible people, and you don't have to wait until next year to talk to people or whatever. Despite being kind of mule-ish, Vicky would come down on people for bullying you about it."
"Oh, OK, that's nice."
"Anyway, who is your favorite hero?"
"Huh?" I think this might be the longest conversation I've had at school that wasn't about work, and is certainly more words than I've ever heard Amy say. "Well, I loved Alexandria when I was little, but I guess I'm a bit more vague now. I like Miss Militia, Armsmaster, and Panacea now, I guess." Any of those three could save people from cars and were here in the city.
"Yeah, did Panacea heal you or your family too?" Amy is oddly, well, derisive, but I guess I'll stick with being honest. It's that sort of day I suppose.
"Well, no, but you could have. I mean, not really, but if things had been different, if the paramedics had been been faster, and, well, if things had been different. I just, well, it's nice to dream sometimes, I mean for things to have been different. It wasn't anybody's fault, not really, but, well it could have been fixed.
"Even if all the criminals get caught or whatever, and all the other heroes are out of a job, Panacea would still be able to make a difference, because the work you do is good even if other people aren't being evil."
Amy is looking at me weird again. I'm starting to think that maybe it's not me. Maybe it's other people that are crazy.
Amy breaks the pause, standing up and slinging her backpack over her shoulder. "Well, this has been weird, and more weird, so, yeah, I'll see you around Taylor."
"It was my mom." Oh god; brain, what are you doing? Brain, stop talking. "It was an accident, and they couldn't get her out of the wreck soon enough, and I don't even know if they would've taken her to your hospital, or if you were even there, or anything. I just wish things had been better."
Oh, please, I don't want to cry.
"I'm not saying it was your fault, anymore than, like, Armsmaster not being there to cut the car apart, even though he could have been. It's just good, I guess, that things could have been better, that even if these things happen, maybe they don't always have to. Sorry, I'm sorry to babble at you, I just get upset sometimes." I just look at my hands for a moment, and try to calm down.
"...Yeah, I get upset sometimes too." Amy is polite, about this, thankfully.
"I, uh, well, thanks for listening, even if you weren't planning to."
"Fair enough, let's be awkward again sometime."
I huddle up and let Amy get away before I can start talking again.
This could've been worse, I suppose. Amy, and Vicky are a lot more nuanced than Panacea and Glory Girl. Though that's obvious to anybody that isn't stupid. I still haven't forgiven Vicky though.
I go to class.
The second test of the version 2 power suit had gone perhaps even better than the first. And Tattletale had picked up a few guns. After her binge eating of hot food as a reward for the mission, I was starting to feel fairly guilty about not getting her some kind of oven. She had used all the ammo firing at various plates of armor I'd made. I wasn't hoping she'd get shot, but if she kept her effectiveness up, the gangs might try something. She had knocked over two safehouses and I hadn't done any science on even handguns and shotguns.
She also wanted better ways to distribute capsaicin, the current 'hot grenades' needed a launcher.
Also, dad had done a weird turnaround after listening to my recordings on the armor function. I had put a recorder on the armor internal and external, as a test to check the sound dampening. He was now saying that we should let her socialize with somebody, even if it wasn't us.
I wasn't so sure. Tattletale seemed happy wearing the armor, but I wasn't sure that was a good idea. Last night, she had raided another safehouse by leaping from a building across an alley, and directly into the money storage room. The suit memory indicated that she'd tumbled awkwardly, but jumped up, yelled "surprise bitches", threw hot grenades all over, and then thrown everyone out of the room. The concerning part was that after launching the grenades, she's started cackling until she was wheezing with laughter. She'd eventually used the grapple hook to return to the roof across the alley with the loot. She then talked to herself about 'real food' while throwing the loot into the bay for the squiggles to pick up.
"So, Tattletale was a villain, are you sure she needs some friends." I opened up the conversation with dad while we were reviewing on Saturday. I didn't want to her to like drop a hot grenade on somebody for laughs.
Dad was also concerned. "Yeah, even if she was faking, I can't see a real reason for it, if she knows we heard her, then that's not going to convince me to want to reveal anything about myself. If she wanted to run, well, she could get to anywhere in the city before the suit ran out of juice. I'm pretty sure, Taylor, that she is just starved for conversation."
He hesitated a bit then started again. "I'm pretty sure that in prison putting somebody in solitary for a while is an additional sort of punishment. Maybe we could find a warehouse she could switch to using as a primary base, and we could get her some internet at least? Or tv?"
"The Undersiders haven't been in the news much recently, do you think we should still worry about them and her?"
"She says Coil grabbed her out of the blue, with no warning. If she starts going out again in her civilian ID, I would think the exact same thing would happen again. The other Undersiders I'm less sure about to be honest. If she wanted to go talk to them, she could have."
"We could find an abandoned warehouse that is also above one of the storm drain pipes that goes straight to the bay. I can't make tunnels very well yet, but I can make one that goes straight up. If it's close enough to the docks we can even get wifi internet from a random company, maybe, but either way, getting some sort of fresh air would be good for her and it would be a lot easier to get her electricity."
"OK, let's ask her about that when we send along food tomorrow. Maybe she'll have some ideas as well."
Getting down to the docks every day was an extra chore for dad, but he managed, and I helped by preparing food. I'd make a big batch of pasta salad tomorrow morning, and the three of us would get that for dinner, and some of our lunches for the week. Tattletale got a lot of leftovers, sandwiches, cereal, and iced teas generally.
On Sunday, if a letter could scream excitedly, Tattletale's would have. She was super eager to get back on dry land permanently. I had thought that both her lair and the new escape lair for dad and I out in the bay were at least comfortable. I suppose some people are more social than me though. She also wanted storm drain maps, to try and mark out areas that might be good locations to look for buildings, and she volunteered do a reconnaissance during armor testing for that week.
I marked out all the drains, and major sewers as well, on a map of the bay, focusing the docks and warehouses, but also including downtown and some of the more commercial and residential areas that were a major part of the E88. I then mailed it to Tattletale and closed up for the day.
Monday was cold and damp. Tattletale was on a fairly shifted sleep schedule. She'd start looking for a base on land this evening around 9, and continue until about 5 am. I had really liked her suggested plan to harvest Squealer's workshop. I needed to plan how actually do the harvesting though. I'd need hours, close to ten, even if I brought nearly all my units, assuming Squealer mostly worked with metal. Maybe if I fill the building with some kind of foam? I could make some ants that could cut passages through the foam to the goods? Then again, the Merchants could just drive out while I was pumping foam and I'd miss all the vehicles. Tattletale hadn't liked my flamethrower idea, but maybe she would like a glue thrower?
Yikes, I'm running late. I hurriedly finished getting ready for school and ran out to catch the bus down the block.
I made my bus and got to school. The morning classes were good, and I hadn't had to worry about lunch for a while as well. Occasionally somebody would use a spot where I normally sat, maybe because their usual spot was full, but Sophia's group left me alone. I could read or study, and it was a lot better than things had been. Today though I had to go to the library after I ate, and get a coding book. My website transfer project had a strong start, but I had lagged on it recently, mostly because I was afraid to use it to ask the cape questions I wanted, and so it was currently useless to me.
The school library was oddly full. While midterms were coming up, I guess my time at Winslow had led me to expect mostly slacking from the students. I got my programming book and looked for a table, and grumbled at the kids who just scattered stuff everywhere, hogging space.
Oh, Amy is here, and has space. I guess I can find out how much sincerity was in that group apology that was delivered by their redhead friend.
"Hi Amy, I'm sorry to bother you, but if you don't mind, could I use some of the table?"
She looks up at me, looks around, and says "Sure, that would be fine, Taylor." and immediately goes back to her reading.
Yeah, I'm content with that. I sit down and crack my book. I've got about 20 min to take notes on why javascript should die in a fire, or how I can fix the parsing error due to timing out of events of copied web pages with live information. Either way, I'm not feeling picky at the moment.
I don't quite finish, but it's enough, and I don't need to check out the book. I can find the rest online in class this afternoon.
I guess I should try to be nice. "Hey Amy, thanks for sharing the table."
"It's fine, don't worry about it. Hey, do you have a minute?" She's not happy, smug, or angry, so maybe she's not hostile.
"Uh, OK. Did you want something?"
"What is your history with Sophia?"
Uh, what? I sort of stare dumbly before giving my brain a mental shake. "You sit together, why are you asking me instead of her?"
"I'm asking you because Sophia's bitch. I figured even if you fed me another line of bull, it'd be different than hers, and I already talk to her occasionally. A variety of bullshit isn't exactly the spice of life, but hey it's what I get while I'm here."
Well, that's an answer that raises even more questions, but I guess if today is brutal honesty day: "Sophia, and another girl, Emma, who was my best friend up until high school, bullied me all freshman year. Knocking me over, insults, ruining my homework, they even somehow managed to steal my textbooks from my locker several times and trash them. I did everything I could to get out of Winslow and away from them. Then, surprise, Sophia is here too."
I pause at that, and narrate the tangent, "The odd thing is that she liked Winslow, that dump, because she could do whatever she wanted. I've no idea how she even got into Arcadia, much less why she wanted to come."
Amy isn't really expressive, but she folded her hands in her lap and got sort of rigid while I was talking. I guess she was hoping her bitchy friend wasn't also an ass. Bleah, these kids are weird.
Before I think things through, I start talking for no good reason. "Why are you friends with Sophia? I mean at Winslow, Sophia was pretty much only friends with Emma. Emma was all social and stuff, and she had a ton of sycophants, but Sophia ignored most people except to shove or trip or punch them. I'm willing to believe Amy is a different kind of person than Panacea, but still, what part of you likes to be around Sophia? Is she actually nice?"
Amy pauses for a moment, then says, "I'm with Vicky, she cycles between dating Dean, or hating him, and either way, can't let him be away from her, and Dean has some job or something that he shares with Sophia."
"I've never seen Sophia interested in anything other than hurting people, being better than people, or being violent. I guess she liked track, or at least she kept doing it. What kind of job does she have?"
"I dunno, I don't give a shit. Maybe it's filing or something. It's not like she has to like a job to want to get enough money to support her puppy eating habits."
I start giggling, I can't help myself. A moment later Amy snorts in amusement noise as well.
"Yeah, so sorry again about Vicky by the way, she gets blunt sometimes. Brandish tore into her though, after what she did, and she's honestly trying to be better about it."
And since I was happy, how about we talk about the time I was so terrified I humiliated myself in public. "Oh, that's good then, I guess."
Amy doesn't appear actually sympathetic, but she's not looking cruel either. "Yeah, it sucked for you, but nobody talked about it."
She sighs and then starts again. "I'm not uh saying what I mean here, uh, fuck, just don't expect people to know. We're not spreading it around, we're honestly not horrible people, and you don't have to wait until next year to talk to people or whatever. Despite being kind of mule-ish, Vicky would come down on people for bullying you about it."
"Oh, OK, that's nice."
"Anyway, who is your favorite hero?"
"Huh?" I think this might be the longest conversation I've had at school that wasn't about work, and is certainly more words than I've ever heard Amy say. "Well, I loved Alexandria when I was little, but I guess I'm a bit more vague now. I like Miss Militia, Armsmaster, and Panacea now, I guess." Any of those three could save people from cars and were here in the city.
"Yeah, did Panacea heal you or your family too?" Amy is oddly, well, derisive, but I guess I'll stick with being honest. It's that sort of day I suppose.
"Well, no, but you could have. I mean, not really, but if things had been different, if the paramedics had been been faster, and, well, if things had been different. I just, well, it's nice to dream sometimes, I mean for things to have been different. It wasn't anybody's fault, not really, but, well it could have been fixed.
"Even if all the criminals get caught or whatever, and all the other heroes are out of a job, Panacea would still be able to make a difference, because the work you do is good even if other people aren't being evil."
Amy is looking at me weird again. I'm starting to think that maybe it's not me. Maybe it's other people that are crazy.
Amy breaks the pause, standing up and slinging her backpack over her shoulder. "Well, this has been weird, and more weird, so, yeah, I'll see you around Taylor."
"It was my mom." Oh god; brain, what are you doing? Brain, stop talking. "It was an accident, and they couldn't get her out of the wreck soon enough, and I don't even know if they would've taken her to your hospital, or if you were even there, or anything. I just wish things had been better."
Oh, please, I don't want to cry.
"I'm not saying it was your fault, anymore than, like, Armsmaster not being there to cut the car apart, even though he could have been. It's just good, I guess, that things could have been better, that even if these things happen, maybe they don't always have to. Sorry, I'm sorry to babble at you, I just get upset sometimes." I just look at my hands for a moment, and try to calm down.
"...Yeah, I get upset sometimes too." Amy is polite, about this, thankfully.
"I, uh, well, thanks for listening, even if you weren't planning to."
"Fair enough, let's be awkward again sometime."
I huddle up and let Amy get away before I can start talking again.
This could've been worse, I suppose. Amy, and Vicky are a lot more nuanced than Panacea and Glory Girl. Though that's obvious to anybody that isn't stupid. I still haven't forgiven Vicky though.
I go to class.
- Location
- Germany
The awkwardness, it makes my teeth itch and brings back memories I thought I'd repressed
globalwarmth
ruining the weather.
- Location
- Polar ice caps
Tattletale is coming back to being a landlubber. It's a pity matey.
- Location
- UK
I refuse to think about my school and university years. My sheer obliviousness at the time makes self-reflection very unhealthy.
- Location
- Canada
If tattletale's squee hits the right note... Will it break Taylor's bots?
redzonejoe
Vaguely Pastafarian
- Location
- Canada
I choked on my panzerotti. This is my ideal conversation, how did you know?!