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Not a Brute! [Alt Power Taylor][Worm x Berserk]
- Thread starter StupidElves
- Start date
More multiple eggs in a batch, but yeah
EDIT: Hopefully I'll have 1.3 out before Sunday, work's been bogging me down but I got a few days off and I'll see about finishing that chapter
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Dragonslayer 1.3
Betaread by @Hiro Dark and @CyberAngelRowan
Leaping from rooftop to rooftop across Brockton never gets old. There's nothing quite like it. Running along the roofs, feeling the wind billow around you as you make that next adrenaline pounding leap. Knowing that if you fall, you'll probably need Panacea's help. It's exhilarating. Almost intoxicating. It's one of the few little joys I can enjoy as a cape, and I savor it whenever I can. Unfortunately, as fun as rooftop patrols are, they're also woefully inefficient when it comes to the amount of ground you can cover in a night. Between the three different patrols I tend to run, there's always a balance between each one. Tonight I chose the stealthiest, in the hopes that I would subdue and capture more of the filth that infests my city.
My helmet's sensors ping, and a prompt appears in my visor showing me where a noise that had a high likelihood of being an assault was coming from. I leaped across another alleyway and moved slowly towards the source of the noise. I drew my cloak over my shoulders, hiding me against the night sky above the lights in the streets. I definitely heard a scuffle with my own hearing, something moving and two people making noise. It sounded almost like they were being tortured. I steeled myself to see the worst that humanity had to offer in this city, and looked over the edge of the roof to peer down the alleyway.
I let out a startled squeak, my voice modulator turning it into an ethereal vocalization from hell.
Nope.
Not assault.
Definitely not assault.
Leaving. Leaving now. Leaving quickly.
Why? Why would anyone-?! Even if it weren't Brockton- IT'S FILTHY IN THERE!!!
Getting several blocks away before I could let myself continue the patrol as normal, I felt my face finally stop being as red as Emma's hair. Different strokes for different folks, I guess. I looked around, taking a moment to let my sensors adjust to the new area before moving on. Manually searching and listening, parsing out the sounds of rats and raccoons fighting and trying to find the sounds of people in this city. I saw a couple walking down the street, sticking to the well lit areas. Given how deep I was in ABB territory, that probably wasn't enough. I watched them until they moved out of my sight, when I got a ping from my sensors.
Two blocks away, there were a lot of feet and chatter. People were moving, and talking. Could be a party just ended, could be a gathering of mooks and goons. Running across the rooftops towards the source of the ping, I started to hear it myself. Some Mandarin, some Vietnamese, and a little bit of Japanese. My suit was translating as best it could, and it didn't look good. Lots of swearing, lots of promises of violence. As I came up over the edge of the last building, I saw them. My suit counted fifty ABB members, and pinged two capes. I recognized them before my suit could tell me who they were based on past documentation, Oni Lee and Lung.
Oni Lee was, as ever, passive and silently watching from beside his master. His vibrant mask gazing emptily across the crowd of gang members gathered today. His bandolier of grenades was full, and I was wary of provoking him before I could properly get the drop on the group. I'd been close to capturing him before, but he'd been alone then. Now, he's got backup from Lung, and if I didn't set the playing field to my advantage I would lose in a heartbeat.
If there's anything I knew about fighting from before I had powers, it's that a fair fight is one that you've already lost. The moment you try to fight fair is the moment they cease, and that's when you lose. If anything, listening and learning to my Combat Thinker powers only served to reinforce that idea. See, from what I can gather, Combat Thinker powers are weird in comparison to regular Thinker powers. Regular Thinker powers are able to make connections, figure things out, but they leave out the middle work, they don't show how you do it they only give you the answer. But Combat Thinker powers, those are a special kind of bullshit. You can't just not show the middle process in a fight, you have to be aware of all the things that your power notices to make those connections. To know when and how to move your body. Combat Thinkers can skip experience, they already have it. But if you were to somehow remove a Combat Thinker's power after enough time had passed, they'd still be able to put together how to move as if they still had their power. Or, in this case, I would still know to stack the deck in my favor in every combat encounter that I could. That's something that my power had driven into me; always make sure you have the upper hand, and if you don't, cheat.
All that in mind, I grabbed three of my grenades and used my visor's control features to switch them to timed and flashbang. A minute and a half sounded like enough time to get in position, but I was already cursing myself for not including a simple detonator with this first batch of grenades. I threw them out in an arc, not using my power but letting my own experience guide my hand. I didn't wait to see if they were noticed, I went to the side of the building and started to rappel myself down to the ground in the alleyway. Detaching myself from the tether, I checked the timer on my visor and saw that I had about thirty seconds left before they went off. Looking in, my visor showed me that my grenades had landed behind the gang members. I had to get everyone looking in my direction if I didn't want all of that to be a waste. So, I did what I had to do.
I walked in, detaching the Endslayer and my cloak. I let it hum with power audibly as I kept walking in. I say walk, but it was more of a methodical stomp. I didn't step with care, with practiced ease I allowed the full weight of my suit to hit the ground with every step. It was loud, it was obvious, it was bait.
It worked.
It grabbed everyone's attention as I walked in. It felt like ages, but I could see from the timer that it had only taken twenty seconds.
I could see the fear in the gang members, they knew who I was, they knew what I was liable to do to them. Lung noticed this, and he started to speak.
"Black Knight," he growled at me. I could hear the grin on his face as he addressed me, clearly eager for a fight. But then, the flashbangs went off.
My helmet and visor protected me from their effect, deafening all noise and blackening my vision just before they went off. Switching the Endslayer to its stun setting, I charged.
Cleaving my way through the now blind and deaf ABB, I took down well over half their number before Lung and Oni Lee were able to shake off of the effects of my grenades.
My power screamed at me to leap forward; obliging it, I felt the air behind me slam into my back as shrapnel from Oni Lee's grenades pinged off of my armor.
Switching the Endslayer from stun to monomolecular blade, I swung to the right, slicing right through one of Lee's clones and stopping him from priming his grenades. My helmet pinged that Lung had already begun ramping up, I saw him out of the corner of my eye with silver scales forming and flame dancing around.
Switching back to stun, I started to smash and cleave my way through the remaining ABB thugs to get towards Lung, to try and knock him down before he gets too big to manage. Switching back to blade, another cut through an Oni Lee clone before going back to stun.
Clearing the remainder out of my way, I leapt towards Lung, noticing that he already had scales and was about nine feet tall. Switching the Endslayer to its matter disintegration mode, I swung with all my might down while still in the air heading towards the draconic bastard.
Like a hot knife through butter, it cleaved through him and his right arm fell to the ground. I heard him roar in pain and anger, and I watched as his ramping up sped up, his arm quickly growing back. My power told me that he was about to blast me with fire, but that I could dash through it quickly and keep up the offensive with minor damage to myself thanks to my armor. I saw his fire start, arcing around his body before beginning to shoot forwards at me. I kept the assault and jumped forward as he lept back, severing his other arm at the shoulder and taking out his left leg at the knee.
I spotted Oni Lee off to the side in one of the alleys, and I quickly threw one of my knives at him, marking him as the target in my helmet's computer to help the gyro ensure that it landed in him blade first before turning around and cleaving through another clone.
Dodging to the left, I felt a powerful gust of wind hit me and I saw one of Lung's arms swiping through empty air. I had barely dodged that. I saw him snarl and heard his inhuman growls reverberate through my bones.
"'ILL 'OU!"
Great, now he's started this shit again. Is it too much to ask that the most dangerous cape in the city maintain his mental faculties as he gets stronger?
"'ILL 'OU DEAD!"
Apparently.
I saw long spears start to grow out of his back. Shit, he was fifteen feet. His wings, great, just what I needed. I darted forward, readying myself to cleave his legs off. With a grunt of exertion turning into a roar of my own, I swung.
Lung fell.
One swing, no more legs. I felt the telltale sign that the merry suicide bomber was behind me, and jumped forward just as my power was yelling at me to do so. Huh. That's new. I beat my power's reaction time. I turned in midair and saw that my knife was buried hilt deep into his shoulder. That'll keep the bastard from using that arm.
That's something else that I've learned since starting to be a cape. There's no such thing as a flesh wound to the shoulder. If you've been shot in the shoulder, or in this case stabbed, there's a whole complicated set of muscles and bones there that work to control the whole arm. Getting your shoulder wrecked will put you out of the fight, unless you're a goddamned mass CLONING SUICIDE BOMBER!
I watched him teleport, setting a new clone up to the side before this one ran straight at me. I ran straight at him before reaching up and ripping my knife out of him, going up and over him to completely fuck his shoulder over before the grenades went off.
I flew.
I hit the ground. Hard. There's no good way to take an explosion at that distance unless you're a Brute of some kind. Despite all the baseless rumors to the contrary, I am not a Brute.
Picking myself off the ground, my helmet pinged a noise and I smiled. I knew it wasn't a pretty smile. No, that was a feral smile on my face. Too many teeth, and an almost manic grin. I stopped trying to get up and rolled to the left, dodging a fireball from Lung as he waited for his legs to regrow.
Finally jumping up to my feet, I saw Lung standing tall with Oni Lee by his side. I bemoaned my lack of ranged option and put in a mental note to put a cannon into my next prosthetic arm. Speaking of which, I saw the state it was in after being blasted by the asshole. The fingers almost fused together, mangled. I could still move the whole set forward and back, but that's it. Thankfully the magnetic seal still worked, so I'd be able to use it to grasp the Endslayer much as I had with my first prosthetic. Maybe a rail cannon? That could work.
I gripped my sharp bludgeoning tool of Tinkertech and readied it for a charge. Lung had stopped growing, but he was glaring at me hatefully. At least, I thought it was hatefully. His face was too inhuman at this point to really tell.
"DIE!"
Well, that cleared that up.
I charged at both of them, as I noticed a blue Tinkertech motorcycle enter from another alleyway. I gave a roar of exhilaration as I came upon them, swinging my blade through Oni Lee as he was cloning himself, slamming it into Lung's side and burying it halfway through his torso before ripping it out.
I heard an angry yell in Japanese from behind me, and I saw Lung start to ramp up even further. He noticed that Armsmaster was there. This was about to get ugly. Fast. A second hero was going to get Lung even crazier, and I didn't know how much more powerful he could get before I had to start making risky plays.
I noticed Armsmaster throwing himself into the fray next to me, halberd glowing blue in an offset by my sword glowing red. My helmet's sensors let me know that Oni Lee lay on the ground, unconscious from what it could pick up from his heart rate.
Good, that left just the big guy in front of us. My power pinged a plan of action, and I grimaced. It was risky; but against Lung, risky was as good as it got when it came to combat. I threw another knife at him, the one I grabbed out of the clone had turned to ash shortly after I grabbed it. It sunk in, only halfway, an annoyance if nothing else. But Lung couldn't think clearly in this state, and he was going to kill me for bothering to annoy him when a better opponent like Armsmaster was here.
I saw Armsmaster nod out of my peripheral, it appeared that he understood what I was doing and he jumped to the left right when Lung was swiping with his right arm. I started to swing, Lung's bladed claw ripping through my prosthetic as I continued to swing as hard as I could, gouging a huge wound into his chest. His claws kept going, digging into my armor, I felt them dig into my chest. It wasn't anything I couldn't survive, the armor took most of the depth of his strike away from actual fatal damage.
I heard a hiss of air, and I saw three darts hit Lung's exposed flesh as it was starting to knit together. I glanced over at Armsmaster, he had a raised fist pointed at Lung, and I saw a pneumatic dart gun slide down into the wrist of his armor.
Now now, it was a race against time for Lung. Armsmaster returned to the fray immediately, and we both fought. It was almost a dance between the three of us. Dodging, slicing, hacking, attacking. Lung was already faltering, his swipes getting slower, his body shrinking down. It wasn't too much longer before he fell over entirely, snoring as he shrank back down to his human form.
I looked over at Armsmaster before he nodded, and I deactivated the Endslayer, returning it to its place on my back. Armsmaster's halberd was already folding up, turning off and going to its place by his side.
"Thanks for the assist," I grunted, too worn out from the fight to sound like I was saying anything else of note to him.
"No thanks are necessary," he moved to begin zip tying the regular gang members as I went to retrieve my knife from Oni Lee's shoulder. "You don't seem to struggle as much as you did when you first started," he said, "but you still need to work on self preservation in your combat."
I gave a noncommittal grunt, it was a close call, yes. But I survived, and I won. "How's Lee?"
"Oni Lee's left arm is almost cut in half, it appears you were quite close to killing him when you last attacked, as he was distracted by my own arrival before he could teleport away."
"Shit. I'm used to him just leaving a clone whenever I go for him."
"Understandable, since we caught him off guard he was unable to prevent injury to himself. We'll see if we can get Panacea to look at him when he's taken to the holding cells."
I nodded, "So, want to get the statement over with before the PRT and BBPD show up?"
"That would be preferable, yes," he tapped the side of his helmet, "This is Armsmaster of Protectorate ENE, date is Four-Nine-Eleven. Taking statement from independent hero Black Knight after the takedown and arrest of Oni Lee and Lung."
"This is Black Knight, independent hero," and I gave him the basic rundown of what happened. Rooftop patrol, came across the gathering, decided to stop them before they decided to start shit, and how Armsmaster came in at the end to help take down Oni Lee and Lung. I'm sure I could have taken Oni Lee down, Lung would have been a pipe dream, but a girl can hope.
Armsmaster nodded as he listened to the statement being given, he corroborated that he had shown up during his own patrol and that he immediately came to aid after calling it in once he saw what was happening.
By the time we had finished with the statement, BBPD and PRT forces had arrived and were putting the captured gang members and capes into transport vehicles.
"Are you sure that you still aren't interested in joining the Wards?" Armsmaster asked as we were getting ready to leave, "I'm sure that we can make whatever accommodations needed to help a Tinker Brute of your caliber-"
"Not a Brute!" I angrily barked, at this point it was a reflexive response.
He stared at me in response, his helm pointing down as he wanted me to know that he was looking at my ruined arm and chestplate, "Of course. My mistake." He stopped for a short moment, before continuing, "You still haven't given us a reason, Black Knight."
I stopped, weighing my options before answering, "Shadow Stalker. I can't, won't be held responsible for what will happen if we meet."
This appeared to bring him up short, his mouth turned into a thin line as he mulled over what I said, "I take it that you two have a history, then?"
"You could say that."
"Would you care to enlighten me?"
"Only if it's off the record. Involves my civilian ID."
He stopped, and nodded, motioning for me to follow him as he walked over to an alleyway that none of the officers would overhear us talking from.
"She was there, during my Trigger."
He was obviously not expecting that. He started to sputter, his words short and sharp. "She was- she was there?! Did she cause-?!"
I cut him off, "No, worse." I leaned back against the wall and sighed. "She could have stopped it from happening."
Leaping from rooftop to rooftop across Brockton never gets old. There's nothing quite like it. Running along the roofs, feeling the wind billow around you as you make that next adrenaline pounding leap. Knowing that if you fall, you'll probably need Panacea's help. It's exhilarating. Almost intoxicating. It's one of the few little joys I can enjoy as a cape, and I savor it whenever I can. Unfortunately, as fun as rooftop patrols are, they're also woefully inefficient when it comes to the amount of ground you can cover in a night. Between the three different patrols I tend to run, there's always a balance between each one. Tonight I chose the stealthiest, in the hopes that I would subdue and capture more of the filth that infests my city.
My helmet's sensors ping, and a prompt appears in my visor showing me where a noise that had a high likelihood of being an assault was coming from. I leaped across another alleyway and moved slowly towards the source of the noise. I drew my cloak over my shoulders, hiding me against the night sky above the lights in the streets. I definitely heard a scuffle with my own hearing, something moving and two people making noise. It sounded almost like they were being tortured. I steeled myself to see the worst that humanity had to offer in this city, and looked over the edge of the roof to peer down the alleyway.
I let out a startled squeak, my voice modulator turning it into an ethereal vocalization from hell.
Nope.
Not assault.
Definitely not assault.
Leaving. Leaving now. Leaving quickly.
Why? Why would anyone-?! Even if it weren't Brockton- IT'S FILTHY IN THERE!!!
Getting several blocks away before I could let myself continue the patrol as normal, I felt my face finally stop being as red as Emma's hair. Different strokes for different folks, I guess. I looked around, taking a moment to let my sensors adjust to the new area before moving on. Manually searching and listening, parsing out the sounds of rats and raccoons fighting and trying to find the sounds of people in this city. I saw a couple walking down the street, sticking to the well lit areas. Given how deep I was in ABB territory, that probably wasn't enough. I watched them until they moved out of my sight, when I got a ping from my sensors.
Two blocks away, there were a lot of feet and chatter. People were moving, and talking. Could be a party just ended, could be a gathering of mooks and goons. Running across the rooftops towards the source of the ping, I started to hear it myself. Some Mandarin, some Vietnamese, and a little bit of Japanese. My suit was translating as best it could, and it didn't look good. Lots of swearing, lots of promises of violence. As I came up over the edge of the last building, I saw them. My suit counted fifty ABB members, and pinged two capes. I recognized them before my suit could tell me who they were based on past documentation, Oni Lee and Lung.
Oni Lee was, as ever, passive and silently watching from beside his master. His vibrant mask gazing emptily across the crowd of gang members gathered today. His bandolier of grenades was full, and I was wary of provoking him before I could properly get the drop on the group. I'd been close to capturing him before, but he'd been alone then. Now, he's got backup from Lung, and if I didn't set the playing field to my advantage I would lose in a heartbeat.
If there's anything I knew about fighting from before I had powers, it's that a fair fight is one that you've already lost. The moment you try to fight fair is the moment they cease, and that's when you lose. If anything, listening and learning to my Combat Thinker powers only served to reinforce that idea. See, from what I can gather, Combat Thinker powers are weird in comparison to regular Thinker powers. Regular Thinker powers are able to make connections, figure things out, but they leave out the middle work, they don't show how you do it they only give you the answer. But Combat Thinker powers, those are a special kind of bullshit. You can't just not show the middle process in a fight, you have to be aware of all the things that your power notices to make those connections. To know when and how to move your body. Combat Thinkers can skip experience, they already have it. But if you were to somehow remove a Combat Thinker's power after enough time had passed, they'd still be able to put together how to move as if they still had their power. Or, in this case, I would still know to stack the deck in my favor in every combat encounter that I could. That's something that my power had driven into me; always make sure you have the upper hand, and if you don't, cheat.
All that in mind, I grabbed three of my grenades and used my visor's control features to switch them to timed and flashbang. A minute and a half sounded like enough time to get in position, but I was already cursing myself for not including a simple detonator with this first batch of grenades. I threw them out in an arc, not using my power but letting my own experience guide my hand. I didn't wait to see if they were noticed, I went to the side of the building and started to rappel myself down to the ground in the alleyway. Detaching myself from the tether, I checked the timer on my visor and saw that I had about thirty seconds left before they went off. Looking in, my visor showed me that my grenades had landed behind the gang members. I had to get everyone looking in my direction if I didn't want all of that to be a waste. So, I did what I had to do.
I walked in, detaching the Endslayer and my cloak. I let it hum with power audibly as I kept walking in. I say walk, but it was more of a methodical stomp. I didn't step with care, with practiced ease I allowed the full weight of my suit to hit the ground with every step. It was loud, it was obvious, it was bait.
It worked.
It grabbed everyone's attention as I walked in. It felt like ages, but I could see from the timer that it had only taken twenty seconds.
I could see the fear in the gang members, they knew who I was, they knew what I was liable to do to them. Lung noticed this, and he started to speak.
"Black Knight," he growled at me. I could hear the grin on his face as he addressed me, clearly eager for a fight. But then, the flashbangs went off.
My helmet and visor protected me from their effect, deafening all noise and blackening my vision just before they went off. Switching the Endslayer to its stun setting, I charged.
Cleaving my way through the now blind and deaf ABB, I took down well over half their number before Lung and Oni Lee were able to shake off of the effects of my grenades.
My power screamed at me to leap forward; obliging it, I felt the air behind me slam into my back as shrapnel from Oni Lee's grenades pinged off of my armor.
Switching the Endslayer from stun to monomolecular blade, I swung to the right, slicing right through one of Lee's clones and stopping him from priming his grenades. My helmet pinged that Lung had already begun ramping up, I saw him out of the corner of my eye with silver scales forming and flame dancing around.
Switching back to stun, I started to smash and cleave my way through the remaining ABB thugs to get towards Lung, to try and knock him down before he gets too big to manage. Switching back to blade, another cut through an Oni Lee clone before going back to stun.
Clearing the remainder out of my way, I leapt towards Lung, noticing that he already had scales and was about nine feet tall. Switching the Endslayer to its matter disintegration mode, I swung with all my might down while still in the air heading towards the draconic bastard.
Like a hot knife through butter, it cleaved through him and his right arm fell to the ground. I heard him roar in pain and anger, and I watched as his ramping up sped up, his arm quickly growing back. My power told me that he was about to blast me with fire, but that I could dash through it quickly and keep up the offensive with minor damage to myself thanks to my armor. I saw his fire start, arcing around his body before beginning to shoot forwards at me. I kept the assault and jumped forward as he lept back, severing his other arm at the shoulder and taking out his left leg at the knee.
I spotted Oni Lee off to the side in one of the alleys, and I quickly threw one of my knives at him, marking him as the target in my helmet's computer to help the gyro ensure that it landed in him blade first before turning around and cleaving through another clone.
Dodging to the left, I felt a powerful gust of wind hit me and I saw one of Lung's arms swiping through empty air. I had barely dodged that. I saw him snarl and heard his inhuman growls reverberate through my bones.
"'ILL 'OU!"
Great, now he's started this shit again. Is it too much to ask that the most dangerous cape in the city maintain his mental faculties as he gets stronger?
"'ILL 'OU DEAD!"
Apparently.
I saw long spears start to grow out of his back. Shit, he was fifteen feet. His wings, great, just what I needed. I darted forward, readying myself to cleave his legs off. With a grunt of exertion turning into a roar of my own, I swung.
Lung fell.
One swing, no more legs. I felt the telltale sign that the merry suicide bomber was behind me, and jumped forward just as my power was yelling at me to do so. Huh. That's new. I beat my power's reaction time. I turned in midair and saw that my knife was buried hilt deep into his shoulder. That'll keep the bastard from using that arm.
That's something else that I've learned since starting to be a cape. There's no such thing as a flesh wound to the shoulder. If you've been shot in the shoulder, or in this case stabbed, there's a whole complicated set of muscles and bones there that work to control the whole arm. Getting your shoulder wrecked will put you out of the fight, unless you're a goddamned mass CLONING SUICIDE BOMBER!
I watched him teleport, setting a new clone up to the side before this one ran straight at me. I ran straight at him before reaching up and ripping my knife out of him, going up and over him to completely fuck his shoulder over before the grenades went off.
I flew.
I hit the ground. Hard. There's no good way to take an explosion at that distance unless you're a Brute of some kind. Despite all the baseless rumors to the contrary, I am not a Brute.
Picking myself off the ground, my helmet pinged a noise and I smiled. I knew it wasn't a pretty smile. No, that was a feral smile on my face. Too many teeth, and an almost manic grin. I stopped trying to get up and rolled to the left, dodging a fireball from Lung as he waited for his legs to regrow.
Finally jumping up to my feet, I saw Lung standing tall with Oni Lee by his side. I bemoaned my lack of ranged option and put in a mental note to put a cannon into my next prosthetic arm. Speaking of which, I saw the state it was in after being blasted by the asshole. The fingers almost fused together, mangled. I could still move the whole set forward and back, but that's it. Thankfully the magnetic seal still worked, so I'd be able to use it to grasp the Endslayer much as I had with my first prosthetic. Maybe a rail cannon? That could work.
I gripped my sharp bludgeoning tool of Tinkertech and readied it for a charge. Lung had stopped growing, but he was glaring at me hatefully. At least, I thought it was hatefully. His face was too inhuman at this point to really tell.
"DIE!"
Well, that cleared that up.
I charged at both of them, as I noticed a blue Tinkertech motorcycle enter from another alleyway. I gave a roar of exhilaration as I came upon them, swinging my blade through Oni Lee as he was cloning himself, slamming it into Lung's side and burying it halfway through his torso before ripping it out.
I heard an angry yell in Japanese from behind me, and I saw Lung start to ramp up even further. He noticed that Armsmaster was there. This was about to get ugly. Fast. A second hero was going to get Lung even crazier, and I didn't know how much more powerful he could get before I had to start making risky plays.
I noticed Armsmaster throwing himself into the fray next to me, halberd glowing blue in an offset by my sword glowing red. My helmet's sensors let me know that Oni Lee lay on the ground, unconscious from what it could pick up from his heart rate.
Good, that left just the big guy in front of us. My power pinged a plan of action, and I grimaced. It was risky; but against Lung, risky was as good as it got when it came to combat. I threw another knife at him, the one I grabbed out of the clone had turned to ash shortly after I grabbed it. It sunk in, only halfway, an annoyance if nothing else. But Lung couldn't think clearly in this state, and he was going to kill me for bothering to annoy him when a better opponent like Armsmaster was here.
I saw Armsmaster nod out of my peripheral, it appeared that he understood what I was doing and he jumped to the left right when Lung was swiping with his right arm. I started to swing, Lung's bladed claw ripping through my prosthetic as I continued to swing as hard as I could, gouging a huge wound into his chest. His claws kept going, digging into my armor, I felt them dig into my chest. It wasn't anything I couldn't survive, the armor took most of the depth of his strike away from actual fatal damage.
I heard a hiss of air, and I saw three darts hit Lung's exposed flesh as it was starting to knit together. I glanced over at Armsmaster, he had a raised fist pointed at Lung, and I saw a pneumatic dart gun slide down into the wrist of his armor.
Now now, it was a race against time for Lung. Armsmaster returned to the fray immediately, and we both fought. It was almost a dance between the three of us. Dodging, slicing, hacking, attacking. Lung was already faltering, his swipes getting slower, his body shrinking down. It wasn't too much longer before he fell over entirely, snoring as he shrank back down to his human form.
I looked over at Armsmaster before he nodded, and I deactivated the Endslayer, returning it to its place on my back. Armsmaster's halberd was already folding up, turning off and going to its place by his side.
"Thanks for the assist," I grunted, too worn out from the fight to sound like I was saying anything else of note to him.
"No thanks are necessary," he moved to begin zip tying the regular gang members as I went to retrieve my knife from Oni Lee's shoulder. "You don't seem to struggle as much as you did when you first started," he said, "but you still need to work on self preservation in your combat."
I gave a noncommittal grunt, it was a close call, yes. But I survived, and I won. "How's Lee?"
"Oni Lee's left arm is almost cut in half, it appears you were quite close to killing him when you last attacked, as he was distracted by my own arrival before he could teleport away."
"Shit. I'm used to him just leaving a clone whenever I go for him."
"Understandable, since we caught him off guard he was unable to prevent injury to himself. We'll see if we can get Panacea to look at him when he's taken to the holding cells."
I nodded, "So, want to get the statement over with before the PRT and BBPD show up?"
"That would be preferable, yes," he tapped the side of his helmet, "This is Armsmaster of Protectorate ENE, date is Four-Nine-Eleven. Taking statement from independent hero Black Knight after the takedown and arrest of Oni Lee and Lung."
"This is Black Knight, independent hero," and I gave him the basic rundown of what happened. Rooftop patrol, came across the gathering, decided to stop them before they decided to start shit, and how Armsmaster came in at the end to help take down Oni Lee and Lung. I'm sure I could have taken Oni Lee down, Lung would have been a pipe dream, but a girl can hope.
Armsmaster nodded as he listened to the statement being given, he corroborated that he had shown up during his own patrol and that he immediately came to aid after calling it in once he saw what was happening.
By the time we had finished with the statement, BBPD and PRT forces had arrived and were putting the captured gang members and capes into transport vehicles.
"Are you sure that you still aren't interested in joining the Wards?" Armsmaster asked as we were getting ready to leave, "I'm sure that we can make whatever accommodations needed to help a Tinker Brute of your caliber-"
"Not a Brute!" I angrily barked, at this point it was a reflexive response.
He stared at me in response, his helm pointing down as he wanted me to know that he was looking at my ruined arm and chestplate, "Of course. My mistake." He stopped for a short moment, before continuing, "You still haven't given us a reason, Black Knight."
I stopped, weighing my options before answering, "Shadow Stalker. I can't, won't be held responsible for what will happen if we meet."
This appeared to bring him up short, his mouth turned into a thin line as he mulled over what I said, "I take it that you two have a history, then?"
"You could say that."
"Would you care to enlighten me?"
"Only if it's off the record. Involves my civilian ID."
He stopped, and nodded, motioning for me to follow him as he walked over to an alleyway that none of the officers would overhear us talking from.
"She was there, during my Trigger."
He was obviously not expecting that. He started to sputter, his words short and sharp. "She was- she was there?! Did she cause-?!"
I cut him off, "No, worse." I leaned back against the wall and sighed. "She could have stopped it from happening."
Ehhh... Posting before sunday, posting on sunday, it's all the same really...
Anyways, here's this. Not a lot to say about what's going on, felt like the fight scene was kinda meh, still need to figure out a good way to write those.
Hope y'all enjoy!
Anyways, here's this. Not a lot to say about what's going on, felt like the fight scene was kinda meh, still need to figure out a good way to write those.
Hope y'all enjoy!
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Radek
Promethean
- Location
- A Cryptum, somewhere
- Pronouns
- He/Him/His
Well, guess that's about as good a reason as any to refuse to work with someone. No natural Trigger likes being reminded of the worst day of their lives.
Also, the ABB is done for. Good news for the Protectorate, bad news for the E88 since the Heroes can now focus near exclusively on them.
Iiii wouldn't say done for, put on the backburner for a bit maybe... There's a few apostles that would make excellent capes
*glances at notes for the next arc*
Yeah, a few apostles
Edit: Heeey, just wanted to let y'all know that I set up a fic snippet/ideas thread to help my ADHD ass focus on Not a Brute! without totally derailing my writing to focus hardcore on other fics, which you can find here https://forums.sufficientvelocity.com/threads/the-stupidest-of-worm-fic-ideas-stupidelves-worm-fic-ideas-snippets.105188/
My old BBC code skills have failed me! I can't convert links into text anymore! I am a failure of a forumite
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Crazael
Rehydrated Demon King
- Location
- Lost to the vagaries of time.
Oof. Though that does make me curious about if Taylor and Emma know who Shadow Stalker is.
Edit: As a sidenote, while I never got particularly into Berserk, I do rather strongly remember a particular scene where Guts is surrounded by enemies and he proceeds to give a brief monologue about how his sword isn't actually all that sharp, it's just stupidly massive and that's why he can so easily chop three or four guys in half with each swing.
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- Pronouns
- Masculine
Very, very satisfying story.
Taylor's trigger had to be fucking horrifying. And very glad indeed that Taylor is confronting Armsmaster about it.
Maybe Sophia will actually be given the psych-- heh. No, Can't say that with a straight face.
Still, Madison totally thinking Taylor and Emma are together is fucking adorable. As is Emma being so devoted to Taylor for saving them and being her left hand girl.
Love the power expression and the fucking joy of the fight with Lung. Both of them were so eager for the fight.
And well... if Lung has already recruited Bakuda, this'll be interesting. Not sure where in the timeline it is except it is after Sophia is forced into the Wards.
If this is pre Bakuda trigger, that'd be good for the city. No bombing spree and Bakuda might end up bombing some other city or pressured into the Guild or something.
She'd be amazing in the Guild because they'd actually be able to focus her drive on proving her excellence and superiority by blowing the hell out of S-Class threats.
Really loved the fighting side by side with Armsmaster and the camaraderie there. Armsmaster obviously appreciates a fellow Tinker.
And if they collab'd... dear god they could so kill Leviathan together.
Also glad that Taylor cut Hookwolf in half. Bastard. Should be fun there.
Looking forward to future chapters and seeing how it goes. Especially with what you mentioned you've planned on the discord.
Also, looking forward to Amy taking one look at Taylor's biology and going '...What the fuck have you done to yourself?!'. Heh. Not a Brute indeed. Amy could confirm that.
Also love the combat thinker skills she has going on. Just delightful!
This is going to be fun!
Taylor's trigger had to be fucking horrifying. And very glad indeed that Taylor is confronting Armsmaster about it.
Maybe Sophia will actually be given the psych-- heh. No, Can't say that with a straight face.
Still, Madison totally thinking Taylor and Emma are together is fucking adorable. As is Emma being so devoted to Taylor for saving them and being her left hand girl.
Love the power expression and the fucking joy of the fight with Lung. Both of them were so eager for the fight.
And well... if Lung has already recruited Bakuda, this'll be interesting. Not sure where in the timeline it is except it is after Sophia is forced into the Wards.
If this is pre Bakuda trigger, that'd be good for the city. No bombing spree and Bakuda might end up bombing some other city or pressured into the Guild or something.
She'd be amazing in the Guild because they'd actually be able to focus her drive on proving her excellence and superiority by blowing the hell out of S-Class threats.
Really loved the fighting side by side with Armsmaster and the camaraderie there. Armsmaster obviously appreciates a fellow Tinker.
And if they collab'd... dear god they could so kill Leviathan together.
Also glad that Taylor cut Hookwolf in half. Bastard. Should be fun there.
Looking forward to future chapters and seeing how it goes. Especially with what you mentioned you've planned on the discord.
Also, looking forward to Amy taking one look at Taylor's biology and going '...What the fuck have you done to yourself?!'. Heh. Not a Brute indeed. Amy could confirm that.
Also love the combat thinker skills she has going on. Just delightful!
This is going to be fun!
Dragonslayer 1.4
Beta read by @Hiro Dark and @CyberAngelRowan
I made my way back to my workshop slower than I would have liked. Only having the one arm tends to make rooftop routes more perilous than normal. I was feeling a little light headed as I arrived, and I chalked it up to post adrenaline exhaustion. Crawling through the window to get in from the roof, I let out a hiss of pain as I grazed the side, my ribs on fire the whole way down..
Pulling myself up, I allowed myself to relax. My armor doesn't make it obvious, but I felt all the tension in me leave as I started heading downstairs towards Emma. Leaning against the rail for support, I found that I no longer had the energy to step lightly, each step a loud thud as I made my way down to my best friend.
I saw her when I had about a quarter of the stairs left, and she looked up at me from her laptop. I saw her beautiful face pale when she saw the state of my armor. I didn't even notice when she moved and came in close to support me, holding me up and dragging me to the couch.
It was hard to think, and most things felt like a blur. Like everything was either too thick or like there wasn't enough to feel.
I was vaguely aware that the red headed beauty was saying something, but it was all muffled. I tried to listen, tried to focus on just her voice.
"-ood?!"
"Mmwha?" Was my mumbled reply.
Almost, I could almost make it out. Her voice was nice; even panicked as it was, it felt soothing to me. I tried to focus on her, but it was getting cold. That's not a reason to not listen. I tried again, letting myself be moved by her as she started removing my armor.
I felt my helmet come undone - she knew the procedures to get it off? and I looked up at her face. I felt my mouth move into a soft smile, she was just so pretty. I saw her open her mouth and I tried as hard as I could to hear her. I focused on her soft lips, watching them move to hopefully fill in the gaps if I still couldn't hear.
"Taylor?" That's my name, I heard that.
"Why is there more blood than when you fought Hookwolf?"
I didn't frown, how could I when I was looking at her? I heard parts of it and mumbles, but her lips. Watching her beautiful lips helped me fill in the blanks. It was a question, she wanted to know about the blood. That's silly. I'm not bleeding that badly, Lung only grazed my chest.
I saw her freeze and start to panic, did I say that outloud?
She nodded. Oh, okay, that's not too bad then.
"S'kay, Ems," I mumbled up at her, "Lung's gone, captured. Arms…" I trailed off, unable to remember what it was I was talking about. I tried to move my arm, but it wouldn't budge. That was unfair, I wanted to touch her. She's so beautiful.
And now her face is red. That's cute.
"Okay, obviously blood loss is affecting your mental state," she says, probably more for her benefit than mine.
I started to mumble something back in response, but I closed my eyes and teleported to a different room. That was odd. What was I thinking about? Not important. I tried to get up but I found myself hindered by bandages that miraculously formed during the apparent teleport. Grunting, I tried to swing my legs over to the side of my lab's little "definitely not an operating room where Emma tries to patch me up."
Before I could get my legs halfway around, I felt a hand grab my shoulder and push me back down as a tired voice spoke from behind me, "No, none of that. You're not moving anywhere."
I turned my head around to look at the source, and saw Emma standing beside me. Without clothes on.
"Ems… Emma, why are you in your underwear?" I asked slowly, while feeling my face do its best impression of Emma's hair.
Her face very quickly matched mine before looking away. I saw her hands come up as she started to fiddle with her fingers, "W-well, you were cold! And I read that if you were cold the best way to warm up would be with body heat, and clothes get in the way of that…" she trailed off, very pointedly not looking at me or my bandaged chest that I just realized didn't have a bra on over the bandages.
My face grew warmer, "Ems, that's for hypothermia, not for blood loss!"
"Well, well that's what I read to do! And why are we making a big deal out of it?!" she panicked.
"I don't know! We've shared a bed before, there's nothing weird about it!" I replied in kind.
"Then let's stop freaking out!"
"Right!" I took a deep breath, and slowly let it out, letting the embarrassment leave me as I took another deep breath.
I turned to look at her, she was putting her shirt back on and I'm not sure why but I felt disappointed. With her top covered, she turned to look at me and she had a look. I knew that look, I knew it all too well. That's the look she gave whenever I did something incredibly stupid and made her worry. It also just so happened to be the same look Aunt Zoe gives Uncle Alan whenever Dad wasn't in the same room and able to stop him from saying something incredibly sutpid.
"What the hell were you thinking?!"
"I-"
"Taylor! You fought Lung! LUNG! Do you have any idea how many endbringer fights he's been to?!"
"A-"
"ALL OF THEM SINCE KYUSHU!!! And you decided to pick a fight with him?!"
"Wel-"
"Taylor! You almost died," her voice broke, and I could see the tears start as she started to sob. "I can't, I can't lose you Tay, I can't!"
I sat up as quickly as I could and used my arm to pull her into a bone crushing hug. Fuck. I hurt her. I hurt her again. All because I couldn't stop myself from fighting Lung.
I ran my fingers through her hair and tried to calm her down, "It's okay, it's okay Ems. I'm here. I'm alive." I tried to speak loud enough for her to hear me over her own tears, and I think it worked because she started to sniffle.
"I mean, besides, Armsmaster was there." I said, pulling back, wiping tears from her face. "He helped me put Lung and Oni Lee away," I smiled, hoping that I wasn't betraying how awful I felt at making her cry.
"... That explains the shrapnel in your back I had to pull out," Emma muttered, her eyes flicking towards a small bowl that I recognized as the thingy she dropped things that she pulled out of my body into.
"Huh," I vocalized my curiosity, "what was the biggest one?" I looked at her, a small smile on my lips.
"You're not getting out of this."
"Getting out of what? I just want to know-"
"You're not escaping this talk, Taylor." Shit, whole name. I'm in way more trouble than I thought.
Double down.
"You wouldn't be saying that if there wasn't a record breaker in there."
Her eyes darted back over to the bowl, success!
"Heaviest shrapnel yet," she mumbled, not meeting my gaze.
"What was that?" I asked, knowing full well that I had her distracted.
"Heaviest bit of shrapnel yet," she said loud enough for me to hear her properly. I beamed at her, my small smile blooming into a full on grin.
"Lemme see it!" I tried to crane my neck over so that I could look into the bowl, but it was just out of sight. I tried moving my body over, but the bandages got in the way. Who knew that binding your body to stop it from moving would impede your movement?
Emma sighed and got up to grab the bowl, holding it over to where I could look in. Peering into the bowl, she pointed out the shard that had taken the crown for 'heaviest piece of scrap pulled out of my body'. It was odd, jagged, and a bright red that being stained in blood wouldn't create.
I picked it up and felt my brain starting to go into overdrive looking at it, it definitely wasn't normal which meant that wasn't a normal bomb. It looked like it was an alloy of iron and cinnabar, which wouldn't make sense for use as a bomb unless you wanted it to poison the person it flew into. But it should have melted when the explosion went off, cinnabar contained mercury and that has such a low melting point. Maybe it was held together via a cascading electron field from the explosive? No, that wouldn't make sense, it would have melted by now if that were the case. Maybe-
I felt my attention jolt out of a Fugue and I saw Emma wrapped around me. Her arms cradling my chest as she leaned in to me, her head resting against my neck, feeling very nice and very warm. I let myself sit there for a second, tilting my head so that it slightly rested against hers. I took a deep breath, and I put the fascinating bit of tinker material down, willing myself to focus on something else.
Emma. My rock. The solid ground that I have built a fortress on top of. Probably not the healthiest of relationships, but sometimes friendship just is that deep.
Close my eyes. Breathe in, breathe out. Focus on Emma. Center on my friend. Breathe in, she bought new shampoo. Breathe out, feel her heart beating steadily against you.
I opened my eyes slowly, I looked over at Emma and I saw her radiant hair, and I smiled softly, "Thanks, Ems." I put my arm around her, and gave her a tender squeeze before pulling apart.
"So," I started, trying to figure out how to explain to Emma that Oni Lee had actually used a Tinkertech grenade on me.
"So," Emma responded, looking at me dead in the eyes," that was something Tinker related, wasn't it?"
"Yeah, yeah it was." I was trying not to think about the material, but there was something there that I was missing, something obvious.
"So you got blasted by a bullshit bomb, is what I'm hearing," Emma bluntly stated, making me stiffen a little at it.
"It's not that bad." I didn't whine. I didn't, and Emma will tell you the same.
"Taylor. It's Tinkertech and a bomb. You're not thinking of the full picture."
It clicked, just as she finished saying it. The news from a few weeks ago mentioned a mad tinker bomber not far from here, one that went missing around the same time the ABB was being awfully quiet.
"Fuck. The ABB has a Tinker." That was bad. As a Tinker myself, I knew the full scale of bullshit that could be achieved with a Tinker joining the ranks. And if it's the same bomber, then they already found their specialty and that made them all the more dangerous.
"Mhmm, and that's not the worst thing." Emma said, a little sheepishly.
"What could be worse than a fucking Tinker joining the ABB?" I asked, trying to figure out if they had also managed to get a Master, or worse a Thinker. Thinkers weren't as bullshit as Tinkers, but they were pretty close.
"Someone messaged me on PHO while you were out. They knew that I was connected to you, and asked to relay a message." Emma responded, looking at the floor with clear embarrassment. Fuck. She had obviously meant to tell me as soon as I came back, but she got sidetracked by me bleeding all over the workshop.
Thinking on the information given, I tried to figure out how someone would have figured out that Emma's account was connected to me, and then it hit me.
"Fucking Thinkers." I groaned out, pinching the bridge of my nose to stop an oncoming headache.
"Apparently, you saved their life tonight by doing what you do. They want to meet up to thank you, they said they'll be at Somer's Rock tomorrow from six to eight." Fuck. If I had saved their lives, and they wanted to thank me, then I'd be a bitch of the highest order to not show up. If it was a villain trying to lure me out, they chose a neutral spot that no one was willing to break the neutrality of.
Mulling everything over in my head, I came to a decision. "Shoot them a message back, tell them I'll be there."
I waited for her to do so before sighing out the word "fuck."
Emma looked at me and raised an eyebrow, and I responded to her unasked question, "We've got until tomorrow for me to fix my armor enough to look presentable at Somer's." I started to explain, "Place may be neutral ground, but anyone there that's not an independent will eat you alive if you show weakness."
I groaned and hissed as I got to my feet, "Can you send a message to our dads? Tell them we'll be staying the night at a friend's place? I've got a lot of Tinkering to do before the meeting, and I want to look my best."
I made my way back to my workshop slower than I would have liked. Only having the one arm tends to make rooftop routes more perilous than normal. I was feeling a little light headed as I arrived, and I chalked it up to post adrenaline exhaustion. Crawling through the window to get in from the roof, I let out a hiss of pain as I grazed the side, my ribs on fire the whole way down..
Pulling myself up, I allowed myself to relax. My armor doesn't make it obvious, but I felt all the tension in me leave as I started heading downstairs towards Emma. Leaning against the rail for support, I found that I no longer had the energy to step lightly, each step a loud thud as I made my way down to my best friend.
I saw her when I had about a quarter of the stairs left, and she looked up at me from her laptop. I saw her beautiful face pale when she saw the state of my armor. I didn't even notice when she moved and came in close to support me, holding me up and dragging me to the couch.
It was hard to think, and most things felt like a blur. Like everything was either too thick or like there wasn't enough to feel.
I was vaguely aware that the red headed beauty was saying something, but it was all muffled. I tried to listen, tried to focus on just her voice.
"-ood?!"
"Mmwha?" Was my mumbled reply.
Almost, I could almost make it out. Her voice was nice; even panicked as it was, it felt soothing to me. I tried to focus on her, but it was getting cold. That's not a reason to not listen. I tried again, letting myself be moved by her as she started removing my armor.
I felt my helmet come undone - she knew the procedures to get it off? and I looked up at her face. I felt my mouth move into a soft smile, she was just so pretty. I saw her open her mouth and I tried as hard as I could to hear her. I focused on her soft lips, watching them move to hopefully fill in the gaps if I still couldn't hear.
"Taylor?" That's my name, I heard that.
"Why is there more blood than when you fought Hookwolf?"
I didn't frown, how could I when I was looking at her? I heard parts of it and mumbles, but her lips. Watching her beautiful lips helped me fill in the blanks. It was a question, she wanted to know about the blood. That's silly. I'm not bleeding that badly, Lung only grazed my chest.
I saw her freeze and start to panic, did I say that outloud?
She nodded. Oh, okay, that's not too bad then.
"S'kay, Ems," I mumbled up at her, "Lung's gone, captured. Arms…" I trailed off, unable to remember what it was I was talking about. I tried to move my arm, but it wouldn't budge. That was unfair, I wanted to touch her. She's so beautiful.
And now her face is red. That's cute.
"Okay, obviously blood loss is affecting your mental state," she says, probably more for her benefit than mine.
I started to mumble something back in response, but I closed my eyes and teleported to a different room. That was odd. What was I thinking about? Not important. I tried to get up but I found myself hindered by bandages that miraculously formed during the apparent teleport. Grunting, I tried to swing my legs over to the side of my lab's little "definitely not an operating room where Emma tries to patch me up."
Before I could get my legs halfway around, I felt a hand grab my shoulder and push me back down as a tired voice spoke from behind me, "No, none of that. You're not moving anywhere."
I turned my head around to look at the source, and saw Emma standing beside me. Without clothes on.
"Ems… Emma, why are you in your underwear?" I asked slowly, while feeling my face do its best impression of Emma's hair.
Her face very quickly matched mine before looking away. I saw her hands come up as she started to fiddle with her fingers, "W-well, you were cold! And I read that if you were cold the best way to warm up would be with body heat, and clothes get in the way of that…" she trailed off, very pointedly not looking at me or my bandaged chest that I just realized didn't have a bra on over the bandages.
My face grew warmer, "Ems, that's for hypothermia, not for blood loss!"
"Well, well that's what I read to do! And why are we making a big deal out of it?!" she panicked.
"I don't know! We've shared a bed before, there's nothing weird about it!" I replied in kind.
"Then let's stop freaking out!"
"Right!" I took a deep breath, and slowly let it out, letting the embarrassment leave me as I took another deep breath.
I turned to look at her, she was putting her shirt back on and I'm not sure why but I felt disappointed. With her top covered, she turned to look at me and she had a look. I knew that look, I knew it all too well. That's the look she gave whenever I did something incredibly stupid and made her worry. It also just so happened to be the same look Aunt Zoe gives Uncle Alan whenever Dad wasn't in the same room and able to stop him from saying something incredibly sutpid.
"What the hell were you thinking?!"
"I-"
"Taylor! You fought Lung! LUNG! Do you have any idea how many endbringer fights he's been to?!"
"A-"
"ALL OF THEM SINCE KYUSHU!!! And you decided to pick a fight with him?!"
"Wel-"
"Taylor! You almost died," her voice broke, and I could see the tears start as she started to sob. "I can't, I can't lose you Tay, I can't!"
I sat up as quickly as I could and used my arm to pull her into a bone crushing hug. Fuck. I hurt her. I hurt her again. All because I couldn't stop myself from fighting Lung.
I ran my fingers through her hair and tried to calm her down, "It's okay, it's okay Ems. I'm here. I'm alive." I tried to speak loud enough for her to hear me over her own tears, and I think it worked because she started to sniffle.
"I mean, besides, Armsmaster was there." I said, pulling back, wiping tears from her face. "He helped me put Lung and Oni Lee away," I smiled, hoping that I wasn't betraying how awful I felt at making her cry.
"... That explains the shrapnel in your back I had to pull out," Emma muttered, her eyes flicking towards a small bowl that I recognized as the thingy she dropped things that she pulled out of my body into.
"Huh," I vocalized my curiosity, "what was the biggest one?" I looked at her, a small smile on my lips.
"You're not getting out of this."
"Getting out of what? I just want to know-"
"You're not escaping this talk, Taylor." Shit, whole name. I'm in way more trouble than I thought.
Double down.
"You wouldn't be saying that if there wasn't a record breaker in there."
Her eyes darted back over to the bowl, success!
"Heaviest shrapnel yet," she mumbled, not meeting my gaze.
"What was that?" I asked, knowing full well that I had her distracted.
"Heaviest bit of shrapnel yet," she said loud enough for me to hear her properly. I beamed at her, my small smile blooming into a full on grin.
"Lemme see it!" I tried to crane my neck over so that I could look into the bowl, but it was just out of sight. I tried moving my body over, but the bandages got in the way. Who knew that binding your body to stop it from moving would impede your movement?
Emma sighed and got up to grab the bowl, holding it over to where I could look in. Peering into the bowl, she pointed out the shard that had taken the crown for 'heaviest piece of scrap pulled out of my body'. It was odd, jagged, and a bright red that being stained in blood wouldn't create.
I picked it up and felt my brain starting to go into overdrive looking at it, it definitely wasn't normal which meant that wasn't a normal bomb. It looked like it was an alloy of iron and cinnabar, which wouldn't make sense for use as a bomb unless you wanted it to poison the person it flew into. But it should have melted when the explosion went off, cinnabar contained mercury and that has such a low melting point. Maybe it was held together via a cascading electron field from the explosive? No, that wouldn't make sense, it would have melted by now if that were the case. Maybe-
I felt my attention jolt out of a Fugue and I saw Emma wrapped around me. Her arms cradling my chest as she leaned in to me, her head resting against my neck, feeling very nice and very warm. I let myself sit there for a second, tilting my head so that it slightly rested against hers. I took a deep breath, and I put the fascinating bit of tinker material down, willing myself to focus on something else.
Emma. My rock. The solid ground that I have built a fortress on top of. Probably not the healthiest of relationships, but sometimes friendship just is that deep.
Close my eyes. Breathe in, breathe out. Focus on Emma. Center on my friend. Breathe in, she bought new shampoo. Breathe out, feel her heart beating steadily against you.
I opened my eyes slowly, I looked over at Emma and I saw her radiant hair, and I smiled softly, "Thanks, Ems." I put my arm around her, and gave her a tender squeeze before pulling apart.
"So," I started, trying to figure out how to explain to Emma that Oni Lee had actually used a Tinkertech grenade on me.
"So," Emma responded, looking at me dead in the eyes," that was something Tinker related, wasn't it?"
"Yeah, yeah it was." I was trying not to think about the material, but there was something there that I was missing, something obvious.
"So you got blasted by a bullshit bomb, is what I'm hearing," Emma bluntly stated, making me stiffen a little at it.
"It's not that bad." I didn't whine. I didn't, and Emma will tell you the same.
"Taylor. It's Tinkertech and a bomb. You're not thinking of the full picture."
It clicked, just as she finished saying it. The news from a few weeks ago mentioned a mad tinker bomber not far from here, one that went missing around the same time the ABB was being awfully quiet.
"Fuck. The ABB has a Tinker." That was bad. As a Tinker myself, I knew the full scale of bullshit that could be achieved with a Tinker joining the ranks. And if it's the same bomber, then they already found their specialty and that made them all the more dangerous.
"Mhmm, and that's not the worst thing." Emma said, a little sheepishly.
"What could be worse than a fucking Tinker joining the ABB?" I asked, trying to figure out if they had also managed to get a Master, or worse a Thinker. Thinkers weren't as bullshit as Tinkers, but they were pretty close.
"Someone messaged me on PHO while you were out. They knew that I was connected to you, and asked to relay a message." Emma responded, looking at the floor with clear embarrassment. Fuck. She had obviously meant to tell me as soon as I came back, but she got sidetracked by me bleeding all over the workshop.
Thinking on the information given, I tried to figure out how someone would have figured out that Emma's account was connected to me, and then it hit me.
"Fucking Thinkers." I groaned out, pinching the bridge of my nose to stop an oncoming headache.
"Apparently, you saved their life tonight by doing what you do. They want to meet up to thank you, they said they'll be at Somer's Rock tomorrow from six to eight." Fuck. If I had saved their lives, and they wanted to thank me, then I'd be a bitch of the highest order to not show up. If it was a villain trying to lure me out, they chose a neutral spot that no one was willing to break the neutrality of.
Mulling everything over in my head, I came to a decision. "Shoot them a message back, tell them I'll be there."
I waited for her to do so before sighing out the word "fuck."
Emma looked at me and raised an eyebrow, and I responded to her unasked question, "We've got until tomorrow for me to fix my armor enough to look presentable at Somer's." I started to explain, "Place may be neutral ground, but anyone there that's not an independent will eat you alive if you show weakness."
I groaned and hissed as I got to my feet, "Can you send a message to our dads? Tell them we'll be staying the night at a friend's place? I've got a lot of Tinkering to do before the meeting, and I want to look my best."
Jesus Christ this chapter kicked my fucking ass. I feel like it's because a lot of stuff was revealed but very little actually happened, it was mostly all dialogue and dealing with the unfortunate effects of fighting like a Brute when you're a baseline squishy normal.
Anyways, that's the last chapter of this arc, up next is a combo PHO Interlude and Emma Interlude, and we'll be heading straight into Arc 2 Conviction after that, so stay tuned
Anyways, that's the last chapter of this arc, up next is a combo PHO Interlude and Emma Interlude, and we'll be heading straight into Arc 2 Conviction after that, so stay tuned
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Brightstone
Feral Goblin
Well there's a canon divergence... Lung refused all EBs after Kyushu, saying they were futile.
Taylor is surprisingly calm at the Undersider revelation: Unlike "Bug" when she came across a pho message meant for her, now they contacted someone she cares for directly, which could've been taken as a threat since they expect her to meet on relatively short notice despite seeing her getting mauled by Lee and Lung. Even with the rosiest perspective it would've been a faux pas.
I dunno, I think it was funnier when everyone just thought they were useless lesbians. Having it actually be true makes the whole thing less entertaining. Maybe that's just me, though.
This Taylor, on the other hand, is supremely self-confident--possibly to the point of being over confident--and is very well aware that she's powerful enough to go toe to toe with the strongest the city can throw at her and come out the other side on top. And Tattletale didn't worry about contacting her so soon after the fight because she realized that this Taylor is the kind of person who would get blown up by a tinker bomb and be more excited about the fact that she broke her body shrapnel record than worried about any of the actual injuries she got. She also made a point of suggesting they meet in known neutral territory rather than somewhere out in the city. So should Taylor be worried about the fact that they knew to contact Emma? Yeah. But this Taylor hasn't been kicked in the balls by anything and everything she encounters in life, so she's confident that she can handle it. Time will tell if she's correct, though...
A lot of that is Tattletale showing off combined with Taylor's different situation from canon. In canon she was alone, suicidally depressed, brand new to being an active cape, and desperate for everything to work out so she could have something in her life that didn't immediately become shit. She had a strong power but didn't know it yet and absolutely zero confidence in herself or her abilities.
This Taylor, on the other hand, is supremely self-confident--possibly to the point of being over confident--and is very well aware that she's powerful enough to go toe to toe with the strongest the city can throw at her and come out the other side on top. And Tattletale didn't worry about contacting her so soon after the fight because she realized that this Taylor is the kind of person who would get blown up by a tinker bomb and be more excited about the fact that she broke her body shrapnel record than worried about any of the actual injuries she got. She also made a point of suggesting they meet in known neutral territory rather than somewhere out in the city. So should Taylor be worried about the fact that they knew to contact Emma? Yeah. But this Taylor hasn't been kicked in the balls by anything and everything she encounters in life, so she's confident that she can handle it. Time will tell if she's correct, though...
Crazael
Rehydrated Demon King
- Location
- Lost to the vagaries of time.
No one thinks they're useless lesbians. Madison thinks they're actually secretly dating and wants them to stop hiding it from her, not that they both want each other but don't know it. Their respective families likely think the same.
Fair, but it doesn't change the fact that it makes the whole thing feel less entertaining, at least for me. All the people around them aren't wrong. The two of them are dating, they just haven't realized it yet, so now instead of a humorous misunderstanding it's real relationship drama. that's just... disappointing, I suppose.
Crazael
Rehydrated Demon King
- Location
- Lost to the vagaries of time.
Where are you getting the idea that they're dating? Why do you think the revelation of what Taylor and Emma are actually doing to Madison, who thinks they're doing something completely different, will lead to relationship drama and not humorous misunderstandings?
Okay, imma nip this in the bud and spell out exactly what's going on with Taylor and Emma's relationship
They are both so goddamned dense and useless. They are, for all practical purposes, dating. Neither of them realize this. They are both so dense they are "oh, they're roommates"-ing each other. This is not drama. This aspect of their relationship will not cause drama. They will eventually figure it out, and they will officially be dating. Now, there are a few things that I've set up in these past four chapters to be points of contention in a relationship.
That's fine. Relationships can't all be sunshine and rainbows. You need these small things so that you and your partner can talk about them and handle them appropriately, and grow as people.
To sum up, they're both dense as fuck and that's okay, there won't be any drama from that aspect of their relationship.
They are both so goddamned dense and useless. They are, for all practical purposes, dating. Neither of them realize this. They are both so dense they are "oh, they're roommates"-ing each other. This is not drama. This aspect of their relationship will not cause drama. They will eventually figure it out, and they will officially be dating. Now, there are a few things that I've set up in these past four chapters to be points of contention in a relationship.
That's fine. Relationships can't all be sunshine and rainbows. You need these small things so that you and your partner can talk about them and handle them appropriately, and grow as people.
To sum up, they're both dense as fuck and that's okay, there won't be any drama from that aspect of their relationship.
Justforkicks
I'm just here to have fun and stuff.
So sayeth the Lord, so it shall be!
David Spade
- Location
- I thought you had the map?
Black Knight: "So, we meet again, David Spade."
Lung: "As I have told you times before, little brute, I am not David Spade."
Black Knight: "And as I have told you times before, David, I am not a brute!"
Lung: "Did you not hear me just now, or the dozen times before!?"
Black Knight: "You keep calling me a brute! Also you can't really blame me for confusing you. With this helmet on, small details are easy to miss."
Lung: "Small-...small details!? We look absolutely nothing alike!"
Black Knight: "Pity."
Lung: "Insolent little girl. Tonight you die!"
Black Knight: "Bring it on, David!"
Note: I don't know.
- Pronouns
- Masculine
This is a Taylor and an Emma who didn't have their sexual drives utterly damaged by the horrorshow both went through.
They are that age. And while dense as fuck, may do teenage experimenting like their parents always thought they would.
Taylor never was bullied. So she never got utterly broken by two years of utter betrayal and everything being turned against her. She is strong, powerful, and feeling confident about herself.
The fact that the pair of them are dense and baby useless lesbians only makes it cuter.
There is no drama involved at all, its just teenagers being teenagers. And one can wish them all the happiness when they remember that Girls can Kiss Girls.
They are that age. And while dense as fuck, may do teenage experimenting like their parents always thought they would.
Taylor never was bullied. So she never got utterly broken by two years of utter betrayal and everything being turned against her. She is strong, powerful, and feeling confident about herself.
The fact that the pair of them are dense and baby useless lesbians only makes it cuter.
There is no drama involved at all, its just teenagers being teenagers. And one can wish them all the happiness when they remember that Girls can Kiss Girls.
Ah, glorious, an omake! Truly, my shit writing has inspired others! That's a weird feeling
I'm still slightly sad at the lost comedy potential, because I love a good comedy, but I'm quite happy to hear that it won't become a bunch of unnecessary drama either. I appreciate the clarification. And a good ship with Emma and Taylor that doesn't make me physically ill is a rare ship indeed. I'm looking forward to seeing how things go in this AU.
Unfortunately, "teenagers being teenagers" is nothing but drama, lol. Hence my concern. It's been quite a while since I was last in school, but I--sometimes unfortunately--remember those years quite well.
Though now that I'm thinking about drama, I can't help but wonder how things will go with the Undersiders. Which of course made me wonder about what Coil is doing in this AU. The Undersiders themselves are usually... mostly harmless, unless you happen to be a pile of unsecured money, but Coil is another thing altogether. The tone of the story so far makes me hopeful things won't be too bad, but the two source materials... significantly less so.
