???
Monster and Pride stood across from the Undersiders; Grue, Bitch plus three of her dogs grown to rideable size, Tattletale, Regent...
... and Skitter.
Pride spoke first, voice warbling just a little. "Jean-Paul? But- I
felt you die."
Regent most certainly did
not twitch at his real name being mentioned.
He did, however, fail to come up with a quip once his ears informed his brain that he was hearing
Cherie's voice say his name.
By the time he'd recovered, the moment had been lost and Tattletale had started talking, reveling in getting to do a big reveal. As usual.
Tattletale gestured at Skitter and Monster like a host introducing guests to one another, grinning. "Skitter, red maw girl, say hello to yourself." Then Tattletale rolled her eyes when she realized no one had seen the obvious. "Hi, welcome to Earth Bet, interdimensional refugees. Yes, you call your place Earth Bet too -oh, huh, and you have your own Earth Aleph? Interesting- but you must've met a spacetime Tinker or something-"
Tattletale deigned to ignore Pride whispering to Monster how she'd
told her that particular psycho was a bad idea to go after, and managed to cover her stutter when she overheard
focusing on the Nine.
"-and gotten dumped out here. So you've got no IDs, no home, and PRT policy will probably try to deport you to Aleph or worse the instant you're found it. Isn't it
so good that you happen to have met
yourself?" Tattletale hadn't quite decided on an angle for this, but the main one on her mind was that she was
pretty sure Coil's power, whatever it was, couldn't have predicted this. And hey, a couple of teammates with no family strings attached could be good even if she were wrong.
Then everything went to shit.
Pride was whispering to Monster, seemingly having gotten over her reaction to Regent. (Though Tattletale was already working out that she had a long history of dissembling successfully even when miserable, so she knew it was bullshit) "Hey Boss, what would leave you crushed under guilt?"
Monster shrugged, and responded quietly. "You
know I'm not even capable of thinking that way anymore, and anyway-" Just a
touch too loudly she continued, "-there's no way she kidnapped a child or..." Monster trailed off, seeing Pride struggling to control her giggles and catching a glimpse of Tattletale's confident grin losing its edge as she tried to inconspicuously step back toward the rest of the Undersiders. Monster's gaze snapped to Skitter. "You did
what?"
While the other Undersiders were getting ready for a fight, Skitter blatantly cringed. "I
didn't know! And the instant I learned I started working on fixing it!"
Tattletale, unseen behind Skitter, was shaking her head violently and mouthing
no at Pride. Pride grinned under her mask and went ahead anyway. "She's not lying, but she's got a fresh wave of guilt when talking about
working on it. Whatever she's doing to 'fix' it, she feels guilty about that
too."
Skitter glared at her, the effect largely lost on everyone else given her costume obscured her face. "Fuck you. I don't have any
choice." For that matter, Tattletale glared at Pride, which just prompted another unseen grin Tattletale nonetheless picked up on.
Monster cut in, speaking in the overly-calm tone of someone who is
furious. "Explain yourself, or I swear to god I will
unleash Pride on you without restraint."
Tattletale wasn't the sort to sweat when the going got tough, but her power was telling her enough to grasp that the other Thinker was genuinely dangerous. The fact that Pride patted Monster on one shoulder and declared, "Awwww, Boss, you give a girl the
best presents," wasn't encouraging either. Regent muttering to himself in frustration, confused as to why he couldn't control his sister, was another indication this was bad. Meanwhile, Tattletale wasn't getting information on how to disable or particularly redirect the other Thinker. She could punch the girl's buttons about having killed her version of Alec, but... she didn't see a way that would end well, and it wasn't even a
secret.
Skitter's arms went around herself, an unusual show of vulnerability that Tattletale was pretty sure was 80% calculated. "We were doing a mission, and I didn't know we were the
distraction while our boss kidnapped a girl. I had no way of knowing!"
Monster took a step forward, fists clenched. "I meant explain your
new guilt."
Skitter closed down, stepping back and cloaking herself in bugs. "I don't have to justify myself to you."
Monster took another step forward, ignoring how Bitch began growling, as did all her dogs. "If you're
me,
yes you fucking do. If I can't stand it, you certainly can't live with yourself. And you
have to."
To human senses, Skitter gave away nothing, not unless one already knew what an agitated swarm of hers looked like. To Tattletale and Pride, it was clear as day that was a gutpunch. Eventually, slowly, she admitted, "I'm... our boss wants to take over Brockton Bay. Rebuild it after Leviathan's attack-" Monster and Pride exchanged a surprised glance, looking with new eyes on the rubbish-strewn warehouse around them. "-in... his image, I guess. He's
promised he'll let her go home if I perform above and beyond."
Monster frowned, torn between two immediate responses. Finally she decided one was more important than the other, at least for now. "I can't name a single villain in Brockton Bay with enough consistency, or honor, or whatever that I'd take them at their word on much of anything. Nobody who operates like the Nine, stringently holding to their word so they can hang truly dire threats over people without using them." The Undersiders all goggled a bit at the comparison, even Bitch, though Tattletale did her best to prevent them from saying what she
knew would provoke the frustrating alternate-Taylor. This was made difficult by the need to do so without letting the other two capes notice she was doing any such thing, particularly the other Thinker whose power Tattletale had already figured out had some kind of emotion-sensing thing going on and it clearly didn't need sight.
Skitter was conspicuously silent.
Pride, a bit disappointed now that it seemed unlikely she'd get to cut loose on some people without the Boss getting on her case over it, asked, "Who is it?"
Surprisingly, it was Bitch who volunteered the information. "Calls himself Coil." She sounded distinctly unimpressed, the insult in her tone more damning than any words she could've picked. Tattletale's rictus grin had yet to break, her intuition and
common sense telling her that Coil would not appreciate his connection to the Undersiders being spelled out at this stage of the game but her power
also increasingly telling her that the other Thinker was
doing something to her and only not pushing harder because Tattletale wasn't obviously causing problems and her 'boss' would come down on her like a ton of bricks if she didn't have a good excuse for blatantly warping people. So Tattletale was stuck with trying to subtly signal
bad idea, don't do that. And the other Thinker seemed to be
amused by her attempts to hide her efforts.
At least they still had Imp as a trump card if this went south. South
er. And so far she hadn't jumped the gun... which... seemed odd now that Tattletale was thinking about it. Remembering the girl, what she was
like, was hard even with her power eating at the edges of it, but her gut told her Imp should've done something by now.
Unfortunately, Monster and Pride both just stared blankly at Coil's name, mouthing 'who?' Apparently the man was just as secretive in their reality. Or possibly non-existent.
Then Pride made an intuitive leap. "Hey, we wouldn't happen to be talking about Cavedude right now? Works at the PRT-" Tattletale went
white, and then immediately tried to position herself so none of the other Undersiders could see her reaction. It was too late to hide it from the interdimensional homewreckers, but the other Thinker kept talking anyway. "-lives in an underground cave with like a bunch of people who have military respect for him, and is right at this very moment being creepy at someone I'm 80% confident is a child who wants to go home?" Then Pride stopped talking, waved theatrically in the general direction of Coil's base, and declared, "That's a
yes, apparently."
"Pride. Apathy," was all the warning the Undersiders got before everyone except Regent -dogs included- found themselves rapidly struggling to remember why they cared about... much of anything. Really, even remaining standing, or sitting on one of the dogs, felt like entirely too much effort. Tattletale's power didn't care, still feeding her details about what was being done to them by its best guesses, but Tattletale couldn't bring herself to guide it. She couldn't see a reason why she
should, even when her power was insisting this was probably a setup for an execution.
Then Skitter jerked to attention. Her bugs were wandering aimlessly, but she pulled out her baton and shifted her weight, ready to strike. Pride frowned at her, but first asked, "Hey, Other Jean-Paul, if we go kill your boss or something are you going to get revenge or anything stupid like that?"
He shrugged, having not even bothered to prep his scepter taser. "He's good money, but he's been getting demanding lately. Whatever."
Skitter hissed out, "You are
not fucking this up! I've got a plan, it's
going to work, and if you ruin it I, I swear I'll-"
Monster waved dismissively. "We know what we're doing. Come on, Pride." She turned away, Pride briefly stopping to give an acknowledging nod to Regent, and then another nod to a completely random and empty patch of ground that most certainly did not contain an unknowable girl who'd spent the last five minutes unable to think of a reason to do much of anything.
With a strangled shout somewhere between a sob and a warcry, Skitter charged with her baton ready to come down on her horrible alternate universe self's skull, only for the Thinker to whisper to the other Taylor and the awful bitch turned around while unbuttoning her
skirt and tossing it at Skitter.
The next several seconds
hurt, leaving Skitter gasping on the ground, the wind knocked out of her.
By the time she'd regained her feet, not to mention her breath, the invaders were gone, somehow already at the edge of her range.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
In one reality, Coil was getting a few questions out of his pet, deep in his underground fortress of safety. This reality was going to be discarded anyway, so rousing her from her sleep cost him nothing.
In another reality, Thomas Calvert was checking national news on a laptop in the comfort of his own home. Or as comfortable as a post-Leviathan disaster area could really be. His late lunch wasn't very appetizing, either, but it was better than what most people in the city could get, and that was satisfying in its own way.
Abruptly, Thomas Calvert's ordinary post-Leviathan morning was interrupted by
something crashing in through his recently-replaced glass doors to the patio out back, a teenage girl's voice calling out, "Nice to finally meet you, Cavedude! Sorta! So did you kidnap a little girl at any point in your life and then hook her on drugs?"
Calmer than he felt, Thomas Calvert gently pushed his laptop to one side and turned to face the two costumed capes now standing in his kitchen, the edgier one apparently trying to kill him with a glare. No apparent power to back the anger, though. "There must be some mistake, miss?..."
Instead of obliging him with a name, the girl sing-songed, "
Lying."
The other girl pulled off her skirt and hurled it at Thomas Calvert, which
shouldn't have been an issue -he was nowhere near his physical prime but he wasn't actually out of shape- except he was promptly repeatedly stabbed, primarily in his belly and chest but then he felt an eye popping and things started going dark in that reality. The last words Thomas Calvert heard were, "The girl, next."
Coil, meanwhile, had stilled in the middle of caressing his pet's hair, having
no clue what just happened or why.
Reality split anew, and in one of them he had Mr Pitter bustle off his pet while he set the base to high alert.
In the other, he calmly went to phone up Tattletale. She wasn't his only source of information, but she was often his best; there was a reason he'd gone through all the effort he had to keep her under his thumb. Unusually, there was nearly a full minute delay before she answered her phone -not unprecedented, and given the new responsibilities he'd passed off to the Undersiders it was possible she was simply busy with some piece of laying the groundwork for her territory, but it was much more typical for her to answer before he even heard the ringtone.
When she did answer, she sounded like she was hung over. Coil fought the impulse to rebuke her -alcohol was one possibility, but a more
likely one was that she'd overextended her Thinker power. Which she hated doing even when he gave her
incentives. Which suggested trouble, and he'd already
seen trouble.
Without preamble she began answering his question before he'd even asked it. "Two crazy capes, one's a Thinker with tremendous range of awareness and some kind of
powerful emotional manipulation, the other's... fuck, she's basically Night except
crazier, okay?"
Coil took a moment to connect name to power, first remembering that Night was an E88 cape and then remembering she'd been in Boston until he'd released the E88 identities to the public. Once he'd remembered the power, he relaxed. There were capes he was not convinced his base could reliably defend against. Night had never been one of them. She'd require lethal measures, of course, and in the high-security reality he was already rattling off shoot-to-kill orders alongside a description of the costume his other self was extracting from Tattletale, but nothing to be concerned about. He'd likely not even need to rouse the Travelers and conveniently Tattletale was quick to explain that the two capes were from another dimension when prompted to explain further.
Put another way, they wouldn't be missed by anyone. That simplified matters.
Before he could decide his next question for Tattletale, she spontaneously volunteered information, a point that was sufficiently unusual in its own right that Coil found himself startled into silence rather than rebuking her for speaking out of turn. "The Night knock-off isn't the one to be worried about, the other girl can make it so you can't remember why
anything matters. Your soldiers can handle the Night knock-off, but I'm pretty sure the other cape works through walls and has a range of multiple blocks. Call it 50/50 odds that concrete reduces her range. And her detection range is
insane, she knew exactly where you were and had an idea of what you were doing from-" Tattletale rattled off an address, and some quick mental arithmetic determined... well. Coil was
concerned, something rare for him nowadays.
It didn't take much longer for Coil to decide the reality in which he was talking to Tattletale was of little further use, collapsing it and splitting off into two new realities. In one, he left his orders standing and went to his office with instructions not to disturb him for any reason, and went back to his pet to ask her some more questions. In the other, he sent instructions to awaken the Travelers and ready for them battle, internally glad he hadn't quite gotten to the part of the plan where they took territory for themselves. A few would've been left behind regardless, but still...
Dinah's answers were...
concerning.
He asked what the odds of them finding and entering his base today was, of course. A formality, really, but every once in a while it turned out to be worth it. 97.20004% chance. Essentially the same as saying they already knew where his base was. He imagined the small chance of not showing was based on the possibility of something diverting them until later, perhaps even killing them ahead of time.
He asked several variations on 'what are the odds of them being killed or driven off if I do this tactic' from there, ignoring her increasingly frantic pleas for 'candy'. The picture painted was grim. His odds were better if he sent his men out to intercept them, particularly if he included the Travelers in the offense, but never higher than 30% or so, with the exception of releasing Noelle.
That had a more than 90% chance of killing both capes.
It also had a less than 10% chance of him surviving the month, so he discarded that plan, discarded the reality, split anew, and once again one self went back to ask more questions while the other self continued issuing instructions for ranging out and meeting the enemy in the field.
He'd only gotten partway through the possibility of diplomatic solutions, which were returning even worse odds of working than various attacking plans of killing the two capes, when the reality he was overseeing his people in had a squad miss a check-in. The danger was now real, though the squad in question had already exited the base so it should still take time for the two capes to find a way in.
It was right around that particular thought that the hidden cameras for the primary entryway showed a mass of blades incongruously ridden by a girl in fanciful but, aside the mask, essentially ordinary dress for a high-society woman trying to show off her wealth. Or more accurately a low-quality emulation of such, the kind of thing a girl would wear to Halloween if they decided they were going as a 'princess'. The girl smoothly slid off and pointed vaguely at where the door was -
not visible to the naked eye and currently closed. If she was speaking, he couldn't tell. There were no microphones in that particular spot, and her mask hid her facial movements.
The bladed mass hurled itself forward with such speed Coil caught little more than a blur.
Coil allowed himself a small frown in one reality. That particular entrance was a high-security door designed to keep even an Endbringer at bay for a few minutes, so he wasn't terribly
worried... except he could see on another camera that the team lying in wait on the other side listing into... not
sleep, but something similarly boneless. They failed to answer their radios, too. Even Ballistic, who
had been on his way outside, was down. Only Genesis' projection seemed unaffected, but it took a good thirty seconds for her to notice that the radios of Coil's men were attempting to tell
her to drag Ballistic further down the hall. The one camera aimed at the doorway itself showed that while the damage was slow-going, there
was progress.
Still, at this pace Coil wouldn't be concerned if it weren't for his pet insistently telling him that his odds of death were high, and
soon. So why?
Once he'd exhausted all the obvious and a few non-obvious diplomatic routes -no, money wouldn't dissuade them, promising to help send them home had
very high odds of buying him a day but he still was nearly guaranteed to die within the month, threatening their counterparts' families gave terrible odds and for some reason provoked Dinah into mildly insane giggling, promising to assist them with whatever they might most want
generally for some reason had the worst odds of success of all possibilities- he collapsed the reality in which his pet was clutching at her head in pain and split again, same division of roles. He returned to the topic of killing them. A quick check showed that activating the self-destruct had fairly good odds of killing them, but Noelle would survive and the consequences of that scenario were sufficiently disastrous Coil was reluctant to pursue them.
He'd barely made any headway when the two capes abruptly abandoned the primary entryway.
A minute later, contact was lost with Sundancer and another squad; they'd been together, taking one of the secondary entrances that was much harder to find and much smaller than the primary entrance but not nearly so
secure.
He wasn't terribly surprised when thirty seconds later a camera caught a glimpse of a blur of blades and the other girl inside the base, beelining directly for the central area.
In the reality he'd been interrogating his pet, he switched to prepping to leave with her through the escape route. The one where he'd ensured everyone involved in its creation was dead, not the fake escape route for killing traitors. His pet dragged her feet and complained loudly about her headache, but never
quite enough for him to seriously consider backhanding her and manhandling her -he wanted one hand free for his pistol, after all. And also to initiate the self-destruct.
In the reality he was leading the defense, he directed his men to cut loose with their worst. Grenades, tinkertech lasers, a rocket launcher he didn't remember authorizing but punishment on that count could wait, and of course he had the booby-traps activated.
There followed two minutes of silence, staring into the smoke. Around the time Coil began to wonder if he should collapse the attempting-escape reality, he noticed that the silence was not the anticipatory silence of a large number of people metaphorically and possibly literally holding their breath. No, his men's eyes had grown dull, and many of them were slumping against the wall or falling to the floor, a complete and utter lack of firearm discipline manifesting as weapons were dropped carelessly. It was only blind luck none of them actually went off. That reality's Coil was struggling to recall what he'd been intending to do and why he cared so much, swaying on his feet and only
recognizing what was happening to him because the other Coil was there as a direct comparison point. It was a distinctly odd experience to have two trains of thought where one version of himself cared deeply about his own life, about his ambitions, about escaping with his pet so he could realize his ambitions, while the other version could
see all those desires but utterly failed to
share them.
The dissonance was so discomfiting Coil collapsed the apathetic reality and split his realities anew. One version worked to finish activating the self-destruct, which quite naturally had about five steps before it could be properly activated and still took a full minute to arm the explosives afterward, a minute in which it could be canceled with a single click, while the other version made to wait calmly in his chair in hopes of somehow talking his way out of the situation. Both selves also racked their brains for questions to ask Dinah-
The self that had just activated the self-destruct found himself struggling to remember why he'd been doing everything, a fact his other self recognized with dawning horror. That self
needed to escape! The waiting self
willed the escaping self to actually try to escape, and for lack of any reason
not to that self began stumbling in the direction of the escape tunnel.
He forgot his pet in the process, only turning about to retrieve her at the insistence of his other self. It barely registered as important, but he noticed she'd deactivated the self-destruct and was looking right at him. Not clear-eyed, of course, but she almost never made eye contact if he didn't force her to. "Pride says hi," she said.
Both selves simultaneously were startled by a banging at the door, followed by scrabbling and tearing sounds. That door was, of course,
well protected, but it was well-protected by the standards of an ordinary door; it was not designed to keep out high-end Brutes, merely delay them if that. The monstrous cape eventually found leverage and pried the door open after ruining the locking mechanism, Coil's selves struggling to think of a way out. One self doing so because the other demanded it, the other struggling to focus with the sheer
outrage of two girls arbitrarily penetrating all his carefully-planned defenses
even with the help of his pet!
Of course, that thought led him to the outrage of how his other self's pet had quite clearly
betrayed him.
Both selves were having an extremely difficult time thinking clearly, to be honest.
In the reality where Coil was struggling to come up with a reason to care about anything happening around him, Monster and Pride stepped through the door, and one could hear the grin in Pride's voice as she spoke. "You're resistant, bro, but you're not resistant
enough. Kid, you need to-"
Dinah said, "I know," while closing her eyes, and then there was a cape being thrown at that Coil and then pain and coldness. Somehow, it didn't really bother him. This fact disturbed his other self.
Simultaneously to the first Coil's room being broken into, the Coil who was faux-patiently intending to engage in conversation smoothly said, "I suppose congratulations are in order." He was careful to keep his resentment out of his voice. He'd succeeded with Piggot for years, this was old, familiar ground for him. He was also much more careful to keep a hold of his pet. He didn't trust her anymore, which was infuriating in its own right and if he got out of this alive he was probably going to burn a few realities on taking it out of her
hide, but here and now he just wanted to keep her under
control.
Pride once again spoke first, physically hiding behind Monster's body as she stood in the doorway in human form. "Hey just so you know dude I can tell you're faking and if you don't put the gun down we're going to go right to the 'you lose' step."
Coil's decision to carefully set his sidearm down on the desk in easy reach coincided with his other self's mutilation. He collapsed that other reality rather than experience himself bleeding to death, and once again split realities.
In the first reality, he pleasantly asked, "What can I do for the two of you?"
Pride promptly said, "Probably nothing and I can tell you're faking. Boss just wants to know what the
point of all this shit is."
In the second reality, he instead put his hands in the air and put a quiver in his voice as he declared, "I surrender. I'm ready to be taken to the PRT."
In that reality, Monster responded instead. "You have a little girl in your lap, drugged, held possessively, who is not your child. I need a
very good explanation for why I shouldn't kill you."
In both realities, Coil spent a moment in silence,
certain there had to be a way out of this but unable to think of any
leverage. He couldn't mention Cauldron, they'd kill him without a second thought. The Thinker seemed to have some kind of lie detection. The two capes apparently didn't
care about anyone in this reality except...
In one reality, Coil lunged for the pistol and made to aim it at Dinah's head, while in the other reality Coil merely moved his hands to her neck.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Taylor winced as she took the unknown girl's far-too-small hand and pulled her away from the villain's corpse. The girl didn't
seem to be injured, but there was blood all over her and things had happened pretty fast. The girl had a thousand-yard stare, too, though Taylor comforted herself -sort of- with the knowledge that the girl had looked that way the entire time. It
probably wasn't the trauma of having someone brutally murdered while literally sitting in their lap that had done it.
Probably.
She hoped.
Taylor almost,
almost told the girl 'you're safe now'. The words died in her throat, because she still had no idea what the
hell was going on. She was in another reality, one where Leviathan had
ruined the Bay, one where her other self was running with the Underwires or whatever they were called again and no they did
not seem to be
heroes in this reality, Taylor was extremely skeptical they were heroes if Cherie's
brother was a part of their ranks, and there was an
entire underground base full of soldiers and sprinkled with capes secreted away under an ordinary high-rise.
Which she'd love to blame on this reality being different, but Cherie had explained on the way over about 'Cavedude' and her theories about the place being a secret Birdcage or something of the sort. So
clearly not, what the fuck.
The little girl whispered, "Thank you," startling Taylor. That was
not the response she was expecting in this situation. She'd been half-expecting to be hauling the girl bodily while she struggled to flee the scary cape who'd just killed someone, or shoving her into Cherie's arms on the basis of Cherie looking less scary, or
something.
So Taylor glanced at Cherie curiously, who shrugged back. "Don't look at me." Then she put a smile into her voice while turning to face the little girl. "Alright kid, we're going to be getting you out of here and taking you back to your family or closest approximation whichever works for you, but
first you need to-"
"I know," the little girl whispered quietly, closing her eyes and holding her arms out to Cherie.
Taylor's face fell, suddenly getting
some inkling as to why a villain with this much money had bothered to kidnap a little girl, before reminding herself that her first suspicion was honestly probably
worse, and quietly passed the girl off to Cherie.
The group headed out.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"Okay, do you know your family's phone number?"
"No." Quiet.
"Address, then."
"No." Very quiet.
"Uuuuuuh well normally I'd look for people with elevated stress levels and whatnot but Brockton Bay is fuckin-"
A limb slapped Cherie in the side of the head.
"-fuck you she's heard and
seen worse I'm sure."
"Yes." Still very quiet.
"
Anyway, Brockton Bay is awful
anyway, but also Leviathan apparently hit so there's like nobody who's happy, especially now that we've killed Cavedude. So, uh. Kid, I'm guessing you have a power?"
"Yes." Just that.
"Iiiiis it a useful one for helping you find your home?"
"It hurts."
"Ooookay. Oh, right! Family names! We can, uh, look up an address book-"
"PRT."
Taylor
jerked to one side, heading for the PRT HQ.
"Hey, uh, kid, have you ever, uh, heard of a cape going by- wait no I wouldn't do that would I uh, hm. Er. Well, um, what are the odds the PRT foams us and throws us in jail if we show up on their front door with a missing child?"
"22.333356%."
A pause.
"That was... strangely specific."
"Power. Hurts."
"Ooooookay. One in five odds isn't
that bad I suppose, but really it's up to the Boss and-"
"Quiet. Please."
"Uuuuuh oh oh is this that Thinker headache thing? Oh yeah, that
is a thing isn't it-"
"
Please."
"..."
"..."
"This Bet sucks."
"Yes."
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
To Taylor's non-surprise, the reception they got when they arrived at PRT HQ was fairly hostile.
It didn't involve being foamed, though. Troopers
staring at them, foam tanks at the ready, yes, but no foam as yet. The little girl's name turned out to be Dinah Alcott, she'd been missing since before Leviathan had attacked, nobody intimated she might be a parahuman so Taylor kept her mouth shut and at one point stomped on Cherie's foot when she seemed about to spill that particular secret, and... everybody calmed down when twenty minutes later a sobbing woman and a man clearly
straining himself not to cry showed up. The Alcott parents, apparently.
It seemed to help that Dinah vouched for them, which Taylor honestly hadn't been expecting. She'd figured they'd assume the little girl was being coerced into saying it. Then she wondered why she'd been expecting that, and why reality hadn't fit it.
Regardless, eventually the little girl was taken away, with Taylor's last glimpse of the girl being her... giving the thumbs down? Taylor spent a good thirty seconds racking her brain trying to imagine an explanation for
that oddity, and then decided it didn't really matter and it probably had to do with the girl being a parahuman somehow. Whatever, good deed done, now she wanted to go home herself and do the same to 'cavedude' in
her dimension. If it was at
all like this in her dimension...
Though admittedly Leviathan hadn't attacked in her dimension.
That prompted Taylor to look around, see if she could figure out the date, and when she couldn't she asked one of the troopers. There was a somewhat-too-long pause in which Taylor found herself expecting to be foamed, and then she got an answer.
Said answer was around a month and a half ahead of the date it should be.
O.... kay.
Taylor supposed to herself that this
did explain Leviathan having attacked here and not back home. It was too early back home, but go forward a month and a half... yeah. Taylor didn't
like the idea that Leviathan might attack Brockton Bay back home in the near future, but this 'difference' made reasonable sense.
More than her counterpart being goddamn
Locust. Taylor wasn't able to suppress a shudder at the thought. If it hadn't been for the anger, she wouldn't have been able to maintain her composure at
all earlier.
Eventually, Miss Militia showed up, sidearm at her side, and went straight toward Taylor and Cherie -Monster and Pride. Right. Don't forget. Uuuuuh mention th- er. That one girl had suggested the PRT would try to deport them to their local Aleph.
Fuck.
Taylor started making mental notes to go searching for-
fuck, the tinkertech computer! It and the truck and the Dragonslayer suits were all back home!
Started making mental notes to look up dimensional tinkers and so on.
Then there was no time to think because Miss Militia was questioning them on what happened. Ta- Monster mostly let Pride handle the details of how to spin a largely-accurate lie. This largely-accurate lie was 'we're two wandering vigilantes that happened to be passing through, we confronted a gang, and in the process we learned that the weird bunker full of people I can detect with my power existed and had kidnapped a child for unclear reasons, so we investigated and ended up killing the head dude.'
When asked 'why didn't you let the PRT know', Monster and Pride both stared owlishly at Miss Militia, having no idea how to begin to answer that.
Surprisingly, Miss Militia let that pass with a muttered '
parahumans' that she'd probably not actually intended either of them to hear, and indeed wandered off to get PRT troopers and Protectorate Heroes on the move to check out this bunker.
Unfortunately, when Taylor reminded Miss Militia of her existence by asking if they were done there...
Well, apparently they were to be
detained until such time as the situation was properly investigated.
Pride had the sneaking suspicion that if she'd
not specified '
foamed and imprisoned' she would've been told 100% earlier by Dinah.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The cell could easily have been worse. It wasn't even Brute-proofed or anything, though it crossed Taylor's mind that
might be tied to how wrecked the city was rather than out of any trust or consideration.
More importantly, as far as Taylor could tell there were no cameras.
Nonetheless, she kept her voice low and didn't take off her costume. "Can
you tell if we're being watched or listened to?"
Cherie shook her head. "If there's cameras, nobody is watching our cameras right now. If there's microphones, nobody is paying attention to ours right now. Doesn't mean they're not recording. Actually, hell, they
could be transmitting to somewhere out of my range. Unlikely, but Master/Stranger protocols can get pretty paranoid."
Taylor pursed her lips at that un-reassuring set of answers, but shook it off. "First thing we do when we get out is try to figure out how to get back home."
Cherie cocked an eyebrow under her mask. "Why?"
Taylor stopped, brought up short by the completely inexplicable question. "What do you mean
why? Of course we need to go back home!"
Cherie crossed her arms and leaned back into one wall, ticking points off on her fingers as she talked. "Jean-Paul ain't dead here, and since I care about him and not a lot else aside you, that's a point for staying. Second, there's no guarantee we
can go home. Third, we're persona non grata back home, where we've got a fresh start here and hell we totally rescued a little girl and kicked over snakecavedude's molehill. Fourth, you care about your dad I
guess, but the PRT ambushed you when you last tried to go back home so you may
never be able to meet up with him again even if we do go back. Fifth, trying to go back home is probably going to be a
lot of work and
very boring. Sixth, your goal is to make the world a better place through gratuitous stabbings, and we've yet to see any evidence
this Bet is any better than
our Bet, which you've already done a decent amount of good for."
Taylor very quietly countered with, "The Nine."
Cherie harrumphed. 'Hey, I was fine with making the attempt 'cause it would be
awesome if we'd done it, but honestly my suspicion is you were going to get yourself killed, we'd take out
some of the Nine, and then I'd skedaddle and make nice with a new partner."
Taylor didn't sound or feel particularly offended when she asked, "Really?"
Cherie nodded. "Really. So hey, why not go for more reasonable targets around here? Who
knows what remains to be dealt with! You
reeeeally wanted to do Kaiser, and here's a second chance!"
Taylor looked away, grimacing. 'I want to go home. To dad."
Cherie nodded sagely, and then remembered to put her hands back into a casual pose instead of a ticking-off-points-pose. "Yeah, we can swing by his place later tonight."
Taylor double-taked. "Wh-
what?"
Cherie grinned. "
Local dad is still alive, and if the local PRT cut us loose I'm sure they won't ambush us if we go visit him."
Taylor goggled and couldn't keep herself from screeching, not to mention advancing on Cherie, hands reflexively clenching and unclenching into claws. "
That's not my dad! That's
her dad!"
Cherie shrugged. "I do not give a
shit about your philosophical bullshit. He's got the same emotional signature, I'd guess he's got the same DNA, and he may well have the same experiences with the other you. It's not like your relationship with
your version of him was super-great. Why not?"
Taylor put both hands to her face, turned away from Cherie, and took a series of deep breaths, telling herself that she was
not killing literally the only other person from her dimension. She was
not. Not over
this, at least. "Cherie, no. We're
not talking about this."
Cherie casually pointed out, "You cared about the other you being a fuckup."
Taylor whirled on Cherie, screeching again. "That's
different!"
Cherie didn't bother to respond, grinning under her mask.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
They -well, Cherie- slept the night in the cell, but surprisingly they
were released sometime the next day after some more questioning. The overall tone of the questioning was wary, but surprisingly not terribly
hostile, and when Cherie claimed they were runaways from abusive families (An explanation Taylor couldn't stop herself from cringing at) the PRT interrogator seemed to take that in stride and in fact with some
sympathy. Attempts to get some info on what had happened back at the snake cape's base were met with a stock 'I can't talk about an ongoing operation' responses, which Taylor hadn't really expected any different so it didn't really bother her.
The surprisingly quick release led to them standing in front of a random building that looked more like a bunker that had seen better days than anything else, arguing with each other.
"Come on, I'm sure she'll be happy you cleared her fuckup for her."
Taylor looked down and made an unhappy sound. "I'm not so sure. If it were me-"
"It is.
Slightly different signature, but only slightly. Same thing as twins, actually, like 27 and 27-B instead of 27 and 28."
Taylor pretended she hadn't been interrupted. "-I'd be mad. I'd have been punishing myself, doing a hard thing to make up for my fuckup, and having it taken away... it would make the suffering pointless."
"That's dumb. You're dumb. She got what she wanted."
Taylor shook her head. "No, if she's like me, what she
wanted was
redemption. Saving the little girl would've been... a method, not the point in itself."
There was a very pregnant pause before Cherie said, "Okay, like, I'm not exactly a paragon of morals here, but that sounds like the exact
opposite of what morality is supposed to be about."
Taylor conspicuously failed to respond to that for a good thirty seconds while Cherie awkwardly waited for her to
say something because seriously that could
not be real that was just
absurd.
To the relief of both of them -well, sort of- a swarm of bugs crawled out of a nearby alleyway, formed itself into a vaguely humanoid shape, and buzzed out, "
What are you doing here?"
Cherie immediately brightened. "Hey! That's pretty good! Locust sounded like a thresher gargling ball bearings that were themselves angry aliens, you just have, like, uneven tone and an extra buzz to the background and stuff! I wonder why?"
There was another lengthy pause before the other Taylor gave in. "
Locust?"
Taylor didn't bother to hide her shudder. "Back home, there's an E88 cape who controls bugs. People actually thought she was
made of bugs, but we stumbled onto her, and she... well, she was skin and bones, it was horrifying in a whole different way, but she just controlled bugs, and she could talk with them like this and it was
awful. I'd... always assumed that was just how talking through bugs
sounded, but I guess not."
Then Cherie barged her way back into the conversation. "Anyway, we're here 'cause the Boss wants you to express your gratitude-"
"
No!" Taylor interjected and was summarily ignored.
"-since she
totally made the thing you wanted to happen happen and now you don't have to walk down a deep dark road of supervillainy to maybe-possibly someday save a little girl you damned you terrible person you. We take cash or credit but
I also take
kisses."
"
Cherie!" Taylor shrieked in embarrassed horror, and with a sinking feeling suddenly realized this was probably what having a horrible older sister would've been like.
Cherie very deliberately turned to face Taylor. "Okay, like, first of all we're in costume you hypocrite." Taylor winced, opened her mouth- "Second of all, unless I miss my guess there's already a Cherie Vasil around here and it's waaaay more convenient if I'm a new me, so maybe
don't be yelling
her name to the sky, eh,
Taylor?"
Taylor's jaw audibly clicked shut, and she faced away, chastised.
The human-shaped pile of bugs remained where it was, apparently unmoved by this exchange. "
Fine. I'm glad. Now go away."
Cherie ineffectually batted her eyes, largely unseen through the currently-unblocked eye holes. "But Taylor, Taylor here only wants what's best for you!"
"
Stop using my name-" "Stop using my name-"
Cherie broke down into evil cackles while Taylor and the bugs did their best to approximate an awkward exchange of stares.
Pursing her lips, Taylor made a decision. "Just... call me Anne now." Then she quietly added. "Sorry, mom."
Cherie waved one hand like she was a schoolchild trying to be called on by a teacher and then went ahead anyway. "Then I'm Ahab!" Anne glared at her, and she unrepentantly shrugged. "Shylia then." The glare got harder, and Cherie rolled her eyes. "Cherry, ya dig?" The glare turned downright evil, and Cherie released a melodramatic, heavily put-upon sigh. "The things I do for you people," said with a completely inexplicable glance at a random patch of ground a teen girl was most certainly
not laying apathetically on. "Fine, call me Jane. Plain Jane ordinary girl and-" She grimaced. "Fuck, I'm going to have to change my hairstyle, aren't I? Uuuugh I
like this one."
Ta-
Anne took a moment to stare at her, baffled by her being clearly more bothered by needing to change her
hairstyle than her
name. After that stare had dragged into awkwardness, Anne released her own put-upon sigh, and then went back to ignoring Ch- Jane's shenanigans. "She's being a
dick about it, but I- I really am here to make sure things are okay with you."
"
After threatening to sic a cape on me and risking the things most important to me over my objections." The swarm couldn't quite manage
human menace in tone, but it wasn't really necessary, if only because Anne retained a visceral horror at anything resembling Locust.
Anne began pacing, Jane dutifully staring at her to ensure she stayed human. "That was... pretty shitty of me. In my defense, I'd just learned I'd been cut off from everything I've ever known, with no obvious way to go back home, I'd discovered that the
me of here was apparently fucking
Locust, and I've... heard bad things about the rest of your group. My version, I guess. The, uh, Urbansiders?"
"
Undersiders."
"Oh." Anne noticed she'd stopped pacing, resumed pacing, and tried to order her thoughts. "So I... I was thinking of you as one of the worst, most inhuman people I've ever known, second only to
Emma-" She spat the name like a curse. "-and you were part of a team of villains and one of them is Cherie's
brother-"
Jane interjected cheerfully. "Yeah, I like him but he's not exactly a point in your favor to be honest."
"-and so much was coming at me I could barely think before being thrown by something new so I... I guess I overreacted." Anne swallowed painfully, turned to face the bugs, and after an awkward moment where it was obvious she wanted to do
something but wasn't sure what, she bowed. "I'm sorry."
Jane broke the solemn moment instantly of course. "Hey, I don't know if extracting apologies out of you is like trying to pull teeth using a string and a door, but for Anne here that's
major progress. You should appreciate the honor of being the second person she's ever bothered to apologize to, after yours truly!" The last bit declared with a proud thumbs-up directed at herself. With both hands.
Anne remained bowing, ignoring Jane.
There was an extremely long silence, and then finally what did
not look like a door to the bunker slid open, and a human voice called out somewhat hesitantly, "Why don't you come inside."
