I mean it has to have some level of corruption going on since that many Thinkers with resources shouldn't have any trouble with, say, finding out about Numberman's shenanigans, Medhall being a front for the E88, Coil doing far too well at the stock market, where people are accessing Toybox from, Elite doing shady shit, Fallen doing shadier shit, and so on. At the very least, they're under orders from Becky to not look too closely at some things.
Our Shining Savior (Celestial Forge/Worm)
- Thread starter happynslappy
- Start date
I mean it has to have some level of corruption going on since that many Thinkers with resources shouldn't have any trouble with, say, finding out about Numberman's shenanigans, Medhall being a front for the E88, Coil doing far too well at the stock market, where people are accessing Toybox from, Elite doing shady shit, Fallen doing shadier shit, and so on. At the very least, they're under orders from Becky to not look too closely at some things.
Ginny McAllister
On the Internet, nobody knows you're a dog
- Location
- Pacific NorthWet
I disagree. Coil is a delicious villain, and it's nice here seeing his power sabotaged. The best part of that is that Coil usually gives a run-around to people who don't realize that he's playing them in two timelines at once. In this case, Taylor is playing him the same way, and he doesn't realize it.
Yeah, he'll fall soon enough. I hope it's impressive, but any way it comes should be satisfying. Until then, I'm enjoying the fencing (and Coil's mounting frustration).
BTW, there are several different fanon models for how Coil's power works. In some stories, he actually does navigate multiple real timelines. The model I prefer (which is used here) is that the shard can predict-and-simulate to an astounding level, even predicting which timeline Coil will ultimately retain. The other timeline then is simply a simulation (a movie unspooling in real time) of "this is what would have happened if you'd taken the alternate actions". It's fairly hilarious that Coil himself thinks that both paths are real and he can choose which to keep, while Taylor can tell which is real and which is fake.
IDEA: since Taylor can detect the fake timeline, she could start dropping misinformation. "Give up. I know you're trying to find the bullion I stole. It'll never work!" or "There's no proof that I murdered (so-and-so, preferably someone still alive but in hiding)." or "I can always counter that with a new power from the Ruby of Kenderak." or other equally inane and misleading clues. The statement would only happen in a fake timeline, so no one else would ever hear them or know, but Coil might go racing after false leads. Anyone have any good suggestions?
I want to say WEDGDG corruption is referenced in Worm after a time skip. A ton of parahumans flee before the corruption probe.
Iori_Angel
Kitten lover
This is an amazing idea!
- Location
- Software
Taylor is being oddly passive. Why isn't she trying to warn Armsmaster that they are infiltrated by Coil? Why isn't she taunting Calvert to see what makes him tick?
This plot line is weird, but honestly it was already weird since Armsmaster threw her in the Birdcage for the lulz... and kept his job.
They had a PRT director ( Piggot ) being either mastered or having her email hijacked ... and nothing happened.
Cauldron experiment in BB is not doing anything, not helping Coil. PRTENE should be deep in bureaucratic internal investigations right now. Hell Coil was actually being stupid getting the job after what happened with Taylor even if she would have never left the Birdcage.
I'm more than a bit confused about this fic, right now.
This plot line is weird, but honestly it was already weird since Armsmaster threw her in the Birdcage for the lulz... and kept his job.
They had a PRT director ( Piggot ) being either mastered or having her email hijacked ... and nothing happened.
Cauldron experiment in BB is not doing anything, not helping Coil. PRTENE should be deep in bureaucratic internal investigations right now. Hell Coil was actually being stupid getting the job after what happened with Taylor even if she would have never left the Birdcage.
I'm more than a bit confused about this fic, right now.
- Location
- Oz
I was thinking on this at work and I finally figured out why Calvert was so weird this chapter.
He's confused himself.
When he's doing plans and acting go/no go operations it's very obvious what timeline he kept, especially since it'll be minutes or possibly hours between splits.
But here, he split and converged dozens of times over multiple hours in the one conversation with the same people. His power gives him memories of both 'timelines' but it doesn't give him a Thinker power to remember which was kept and which was fake.
So he's got both timeliness overlapping hard in his head and bleeding into each other in his memories because his brain can't separate them well enough.
That's why he's claiming Taylor was unprofessional despite her only calling him a dumbass once. His memories say she was constantly being rude and belligerent and he hasn't realised that was in the unkept timelines. He's thinking she replied like that in the timelines he kept where he was professional.
And that's another thing. With Taylor switching things up and changing her responses, he must have kept the wrong one occasionally and gone with the one where he was unprofessional and erratic sounding, as shown by the recording given to the SEC.
He's confused himself.
When he's doing plans and acting go/no go operations it's very obvious what timeline he kept, especially since it'll be minutes or possibly hours between splits.
But here, he split and converged dozens of times over multiple hours in the one conversation with the same people. His power gives him memories of both 'timelines' but it doesn't give him a Thinker power to remember which was kept and which was fake.
So he's got both timeliness overlapping hard in his head and bleeding into each other in his memories because his brain can't separate them well enough.
That's why he's claiming Taylor was unprofessional despite her only calling him a dumbass once. His memories say she was constantly being rude and belligerent and he hasn't realised that was in the unkept timelines. He's thinking she replied like that in the timelines he kept where he was professional.
And that's another thing. With Taylor switching things up and changing her responses, he must have kept the wrong one occasionally and gone with the one where he was unprofessional and erratic sounding, as shown by the recording given to the SEC.
A lot of this is cleared up in Armsmaster's interlude.
1. Armsmaster did not throw Taylor in the Birdcage. He walked off while Taylor met Dragon. He learned about the Birdcage sentence hours after it happened. Piggot was framed for the order.
2. Armsmaster has been trying to contact Taylor, but Director Calvert prevented it. In this last chapter when Taylor asks for Armsmaster's phone number, Armsmaster stares at her because he finally got what he wanted.
3. Like I mentioned in #2, Taylor now has Armsmaster's phone number. She plans on talking to Armsmaster in fake timelines to figure out what is going on in the Protectorate. Armsmaster is actually a really good detective and can probably help here.
Taylor plans to abuse a fake timeline to grill Armsmaster for information. She can only abuse it when Coil isn't paying attention to her and keeping the worst timeline for Taylor.
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There are potentially a lot more reasons why being Calvert is suffering. Remember that Taylor turned over a Master or Stranger to the PRT during the course of this chapter and has no idea what happened to him in any timeline after he left the room. Possibly Calvert lost control over him in some timelines and started getting misinformation from his subordinates. Conceivably even from his own senses or mind.
For earlier stuff, I was kind of thinking that birdcaging Taylor and casting all the blame on Piggot was too big an operation for Calvert. I figured Cauldron had to be helping somehow.
In terms of Cauldron and others staying secret from WEDGDG, I figured that simply ordering people to not pay attention to Cauldron was way too ham-fisted to work on anyone but Dragon. I presumed that that it was a combination of WEDGDG Thinkers being far weaker than the Thinkers we usually see (Tt/Accord/Coil/Dinah/March, who are pretty much all supposed to be world-class Thinkers of strategic importance), other responsibilities distracting those liable to look at Cauldron, red tape and whatnot hamstringing their more reliable people, Thinkers left to their own devices producing their own plots and conspiracies (and corruption) that distract them from Cauldron operations, and nudges from Contessa now and then (usually subtle, sometimes not).
As for Medhall staying secret, I figured they just weren't that important. And Cauldron was directing resources away from Brockton.
For earlier stuff, I was kind of thinking that birdcaging Taylor and casting all the blame on Piggot was too big an operation for Calvert. I figured Cauldron had to be helping somehow.
In terms of Cauldron and others staying secret from WEDGDG, I figured that simply ordering people to not pay attention to Cauldron was way too ham-fisted to work on anyone but Dragon. I presumed that that it was a combination of WEDGDG Thinkers being far weaker than the Thinkers we usually see (Tt/Accord/Coil/Dinah/March, who are pretty much all supposed to be world-class Thinkers of strategic importance), other responsibilities distracting those liable to look at Cauldron, red tape and whatnot hamstringing their more reliable people, Thinkers left to their own devices producing their own plots and conspiracies (and corruption) that distract them from Cauldron operations, and nudges from Contessa now and then (usually subtle, sometimes not).
As for Medhall staying secret, I figured they just weren't that important. And Cauldron was directing resources away from Brockton.
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Aurora Moon
Verfied Insomniac with too much time on her hands
- Location
- USA, Earth
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Agreed. I tried to give the birdcage arc a chance because I'm sure the author had a payoff in mind, etc... but then.... it was still werid.
- Location
- United States
Considering how BS The Forge can be? Very likely, even with this instance being run off of a faulty connection with QA...
Understatement of the millennia.
Seriously, the mentally incompetent bond villain just pissed off one of only 2 groups of people that can legally launch an investigation to put him down for good. The only way Calvert could have the funding for any of the things he has would be playing hard and fast with a lot of rules that the SEC and IRS are responsible for managing - and the only way he'd get away with it is by them not taking a close enough look at him. Pissing off the head of the SEC is #1 in the list of ways to get them to give you a closer look - and since he's taken such a public position INSIDE the PRT, the PRT literally couldn't interfere with it without kicking up a media $***storm.
Honestly, the man is mentally handicapped, dependent on his powers for the most basic things and only seems like a master planner due to Alexandria and the Deus Ex Machina of Contessa's -50 points of IQ enabling him. He just happened to put himself in a position where they realistically couldn't - I just hope our benevolent author sees how bad of an idea it would be for someone so heavily invested to piss off the head of the SEC like this.
Bleh, sorry, I just really don't like Coil; he's such a huge fraud that it isn't even funny.
Chapter 62: End Of Month Inventory
- Location
- usa
I set a few beuracrats onto the Sisphean task of tracking down who owns those supply depots for Coil's men Imp found. I don't expect anything to come of it. Too many possibilities for intimidation or on the sly bribes to gain them access to those spaces. Then I was enthusiastically greeted.
"What the fuck Taylor! I wanted to be there when you broke the news again." There's this sassy black chick tackle hugging me.
"What are you doing on the floor? We have a celebration to plan!" From Sherrel. She reaches down to pick me up. "Oof, how'd you get so heavy?" I look over to the grinning Stranger still hanging onto me like a limpet.
"Good eating I guess. Speaking of, I take it everybody here wants that celebration in food?" Both capes and a few passing Dockworkers vigorously nod their heads. "Well sorry to crush your hopes and dreams guys, but this is going to be a private affair. Wait for Saturday like everybody else." All the dockworkers visibly deflate and move on. The meal itself is simple. Halfway between lunch and dinner, because the kerfuffle at Medhall made me miss lunch. All our capes, incidental and otherwise, make it, along with Dad. Dad makes worried noises about Coil and the Protectorate. I give him my best reassurances. The highest and lowest points for the group today were both claimed by Aisha. She's made great progress in controlling her power, and crowed about it to everybody. Then she lost focus when I put her food in front of her. She moped about it the entire time after. When we all got done eating and the dishes were put away I had an announcement to make. In the throwaway timeline.
"I'm going to be reopening my workshop shortly. I need some help in exploring and categorizing how it grew." Marquis blinks.
"It grew?"
"Yeah, i think my workshop has been stealing bits from other Tinkers." He raises his eyebrows.
"You live dangerously." Oh wow, he just bought that? I might've overthought this. I quickly repeat the exchange in the real timeline to the same effect.
"Mind if I come with?" Asks Aisha.
"Sure, sure. Just don't touch anything if you don't know what it does."
"Bout fuckin' time. I left some of my best tools in the garage area." Says Sherrel.
I put my dishes in the sink and lead everybody who's coming off into a more secured area. I snagged Marquis, Aisha, Sherrel, and three bodyguards bribed with leftovers. I summon a door to the workshop, and in we go.
"Alright, I'll check the garage area. You do whatever. If I'm not back in two hours I'm either dead or in a Tinker fugue." And she walks off.
"Right. Lets do a sweep of the perimeter. New stuff usually pops up there." We do our thing while looking for new things. I ignore everything that wasn't new much to the annoyance of Marquis. He was quite intrigued by this entire space. But I'm on a mission here, and I will not be deterred. If memory serves there were three space expansions since I was sentenced. Most likely culprit is the equipment room getting more stuff.
As it turns out, the first new item we came across wasn't in the equipment room, but right before it. We were circling the locker room counter-clockwise and came across a good sized vault door. Conveniently hidden from the other side of the room by all these lockers
"Well this is new."
"Not really Ma'am." From one of the Dockworkers. "This turned up in here while you were still in the Birdcage."
"Well, its new to me." As I walk up to touch it. When I do, I know intrinsically that I am the only one able to open it. I turn the massive handle, and push it inwards. The door glides silently revealing an indeterminately long corridor of empty shelves. Empty except for a section not five feet away filled top to bottom with bars of a gleaming and rippling silver material. What a beautiful sight. And the things I could make with it! Ideas fill my mind from form shifting weapons, to armor, to transformation tattoos! To say nothing of how I could make more! On second thought, let's just stretch this out as far as possible. That process promises to be far more of a pain than its worth, what with having to screw around with the phases of the moon and all that.
Someone pokes me.
"You're drooling Taylor." Says Amy. I wipe the corner of my mouth clean. Yep, that's drool.
"So I am. Let's go before I start making things."
"Must be pretty interesting to provoke such a reaction." Comments Marquis. "What was that if you don't mind me asking?"
"A formshifting material. Seriously, let's go." I manage to shoo everyone out and close the door behind me. Aisha tests the door behind us. It doesn't budge.
Next up is the equipment room. As expected, there's something new here, but its only one thing. I open up the locker to find an old fashioned fountain pen on an ornate pedastle. No manual. The Forge fails to give me something.
"Anybody have any paper?" I ask. A chorus of nos from behind me. So I improvise and start doodling on the locker itself. The resulting smiley with stars for eyes comes out perfectly. I try to rub it off, but it doesn't even smudge. Interesting. I fiddle with it some more, only for the pen part to suddenly disappear, replacing itself with an inch long wedge. I drag it across the white concrete walls expecting only a tiny scratch. It makes a totally effortless furrow along the wall.
"An excellent dagger." From Marquis. I huff and put it back in the locker.
"Totally useless is what it is. The weapons I already made can do that already. To the locker it goes until the really niche situation that calls for it."
The last thing I got was a bit difficult to find. There were no other extra doors, and Sherrel didn't find anything new. I had to search all of my other rooms top to bottom here. Thank god it was just out in the open. I'd hate to have to go through all the lockers in my locker room for this. What it was was some kind of furnace that added itself to my forging area. No idea what its actually used for though. An examination of the attached machine revealed some sort of green ball of fire contained within. No obvious mechanism to siphon off heat, or even any heat to begin with. Weird. Basically, I'm gonna lock that up forever until I can figure it out. Here's hoping I didn't irradiate everybody. Though Amy should be able to help with that.
I'm gonna go turn in. Hopefully things can start calming down tomorrow.
AN: So I may have forgotten how much CP I had stored when my phone bricked. I realized this when I redid all my math to keep track of when these Forge rolls should be happening. That will fix itself in a few chapters.
Happy new years everybody!
"What the fuck Taylor! I wanted to be there when you broke the news again." There's this sassy black chick tackle hugging me.
"What are you doing on the floor? We have a celebration to plan!" From Sherrel. She reaches down to pick me up. "Oof, how'd you get so heavy?" I look over to the grinning Stranger still hanging onto me like a limpet.
"Good eating I guess. Speaking of, I take it everybody here wants that celebration in food?" Both capes and a few passing Dockworkers vigorously nod their heads. "Well sorry to crush your hopes and dreams guys, but this is going to be a private affair. Wait for Saturday like everybody else." All the dockworkers visibly deflate and move on. The meal itself is simple. Halfway between lunch and dinner, because the kerfuffle at Medhall made me miss lunch. All our capes, incidental and otherwise, make it, along with Dad. Dad makes worried noises about Coil and the Protectorate. I give him my best reassurances. The highest and lowest points for the group today were both claimed by Aisha. She's made great progress in controlling her power, and crowed about it to everybody. Then she lost focus when I put her food in front of her. She moped about it the entire time after. When we all got done eating and the dishes were put away I had an announcement to make. In the throwaway timeline.
"I'm going to be reopening my workshop shortly. I need some help in exploring and categorizing how it grew." Marquis blinks.
"It grew?"
"Yeah, i think my workshop has been stealing bits from other Tinkers." He raises his eyebrows.
"You live dangerously." Oh wow, he just bought that? I might've overthought this. I quickly repeat the exchange in the real timeline to the same effect.
"Mind if I come with?" Asks Aisha.
"Sure, sure. Just don't touch anything if you don't know what it does."
"Bout fuckin' time. I left some of my best tools in the garage area." Says Sherrel.
I put my dishes in the sink and lead everybody who's coming off into a more secured area. I snagged Marquis, Aisha, Sherrel, and three bodyguards bribed with leftovers. I summon a door to the workshop, and in we go.
"Alright, I'll check the garage area. You do whatever. If I'm not back in two hours I'm either dead or in a Tinker fugue." And she walks off.
"Right. Lets do a sweep of the perimeter. New stuff usually pops up there." We do our thing while looking for new things. I ignore everything that wasn't new much to the annoyance of Marquis. He was quite intrigued by this entire space. But I'm on a mission here, and I will not be deterred. If memory serves there were three space expansions since I was sentenced. Most likely culprit is the equipment room getting more stuff.
As it turns out, the first new item we came across wasn't in the equipment room, but right before it. We were circling the locker room counter-clockwise and came across a good sized vault door. Conveniently hidden from the other side of the room by all these lockers
"Well this is new."
"Not really Ma'am." From one of the Dockworkers. "This turned up in here while you were still in the Birdcage."
"Well, its new to me." As I walk up to touch it. When I do, I know intrinsically that I am the only one able to open it. I turn the massive handle, and push it inwards. The door glides silently revealing an indeterminately long corridor of empty shelves. Empty except for a section not five feet away filled top to bottom with bars of a gleaming and rippling silver material. What a beautiful sight. And the things I could make with it! Ideas fill my mind from form shifting weapons, to armor, to transformation tattoos! To say nothing of how I could make more! On second thought, let's just stretch this out as far as possible. That process promises to be far more of a pain than its worth, what with having to screw around with the phases of the moon and all that.
Someone pokes me.
"You're drooling Taylor." Says Amy. I wipe the corner of my mouth clean. Yep, that's drool.
"So I am. Let's go before I start making things."
"Must be pretty interesting to provoke such a reaction." Comments Marquis. "What was that if you don't mind me asking?"
"A formshifting material. Seriously, let's go." I manage to shoo everyone out and close the door behind me. Aisha tests the door behind us. It doesn't budge.
Next up is the equipment room. As expected, there's something new here, but its only one thing. I open up the locker to find an old fashioned fountain pen on an ornate pedastle. No manual. The Forge fails to give me something.
"Anybody have any paper?" I ask. A chorus of nos from behind me. So I improvise and start doodling on the locker itself. The resulting smiley with stars for eyes comes out perfectly. I try to rub it off, but it doesn't even smudge. Interesting. I fiddle with it some more, only for the pen part to suddenly disappear, replacing itself with an inch long wedge. I drag it across the white concrete walls expecting only a tiny scratch. It makes a totally effortless furrow along the wall.
"An excellent dagger." From Marquis. I huff and put it back in the locker.
"Totally useless is what it is. The weapons I already made can do that already. To the locker it goes until the really niche situation that calls for it."
The last thing I got was a bit difficult to find. There were no other extra doors, and Sherrel didn't find anything new. I had to search all of my other rooms top to bottom here. Thank god it was just out in the open. I'd hate to have to go through all the lockers in my locker room for this. What it was was some kind of furnace that added itself to my forging area. No idea what its actually used for though. An examination of the attached machine revealed some sort of green ball of fire contained within. No obvious mechanism to siphon off heat, or even any heat to begin with. Weird. Basically, I'm gonna lock that up forever until I can figure it out. Here's hoping I didn't irradiate everybody. Though Amy should be able to help with that.
I'm gonna go turn in. Hopefully things can start calming down tomorrow.
AN: So I may have forgotten how much CP I had stored when my phone bricked. I realized this when I redid all my math to keep track of when these Forge rolls should be happening. That will fix itself in a few chapters.
Happy new years everybody!
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- Location
- usa
The company investigation got signed over to the SEC this very same day.
Her Birdcage sentence was overturned. Nothing else happened with that yet. What are they gonna do about it, throw her in jail?
I think me slowing down on updates has this story suffering.
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- Location
- Finland
It's a shame that you can only get an Infernal Exaltation from the Forge, or at least could in an earlier version if it's missing now.
There are perks from Exalted - The Infernals in v3, but I don't immediately see Infernal Exaltation, though I vaguely recall Infernal Exaltation being free in the jump doc, and I could be misremembering.
- Pronouns
- He
Chapter about nothing. Just a filler to make up word count.
It's been covered in-story.
The SEC is on the company, and the Master got handed over to the PRT. Neither involve Taylor for the foreseeable future.
For the Birdcage, her sentence was overturned before she even left, there was already an investigation in the PRT that pinned everything on Piggot and everyone local apparently bought that story, though some non-local people are suspicious of it, and Armsmaster suspects Dragon might have been mastered to not fight birdcaging Taylor. IIRC it's unclear how the judge involved was punished.
Life goes on, though eventually she should hear back from the SEC and she's waiting for an opportunity to contact Armsmaster in a throw-away timeline.
Interlude
- Location
- usa
Sophia
I watch as everybody scatters around for this ridiculous 'black op' that's going on here. What a fucking joke! What's going on is that little Taylor made way too many waves, with something way too valuable, and now the higher ups want me to take it from her. Eh, wouldn't be the worst thing I ever did to her.
"So you know what you're supposed to do?" And then there's this asshole. Director Calvert may have replaced the piggy bitch, but that is in no way an improvement in my mind. More than twice as skeevy than her. Ughh.
"Yeah, asshole, I got it. But who knows? Keep treating me like a retard, and maybe I will have forgotten by the time I get there." May not be the smartest idea, but goddamn do I really just not give a shit right now. Helps that I just can't take him seriously. For his part the little coward just frowns and walks off.
I'm then escorted down to the car park and driven to the staging location. Really just a parking spot five blocks away from Taylor's tinker lab, but everybody's gotta be fuckin' pretentious about everything.
"You are a go." In my earpiece a half hour later. Bout goddamn time. The techie along for the ride undoes my shock anklet, and I phase out of the van. Really, the most annoying part about this op is that they got their hands on a tinkertech communicator that doesn't run on electricity they stuck in my ear, so this chickenshit director can keep prattling on about the layout of the lab.
"The building itself is a converted parking garage. Any internal walls will be cheap plywood without insulation. Any electrical wires will be obvious on casual observation."
"My God, would you shut the fuck up for two seconds! I'm not even halfway there!" He waits for a few seconds.
"Very well, let me know if you run into any problems." The line goes dead. Thank fuck for that. Seriously.
I spend the rest of my transit time going over the file they gave me in my head. Taylor may look like she runs a squeaky clean ship on the surface, but dig a little deeper and the rot shows itself. First of all, the DWU rents out storage to the ABB to keep itself afloat. They do this through legally untouchable intermediaries because the prosecution screwed up a while back using stolen evidence. An open secret in the political scene apparently. Then there's her more recent associations. Marquis was one of the heaviest hitters in the bay a while back, and nobody believes for a second that he's going to be satisfied playing second fiddle to some random upstart girl. No idea how she's kept him in line so far. A couple other of the Birdcage escapees have been seen in other cities so far up to their old tricks too. The higher ups are thinking she's gotten a little too big for her britches with that move, and the Elite are getting kind of nervous about her growing network. The biggest concern there is where the hell Canary is gonna show up though. Then there's that whole fiasco surrounding Panacea. Simmurg bomb mom aside, it has all the hallmarks of being an engineered incident. The Director thinks Taylor used all this as an excuse to pry one of the nation's best healers away from her duties. All attempts by Glory Girl to physically remove her from the situation have failed as well, ending with sedation. Next up is some sort of Stranger she recruited somehow. Not much intel on them, so that's something to look out for. Then there's her recruitment of Squealer. 'Nuff said.
Approaching the actual workshop is kind of a pain. The Dockworkers got a decent watch scheduled. Much more organized than any ganger hideouts I've ever hit. There's two adjoining buildings though, so I'm able to phase through the walls there to get past their security. The thick concrete is kind of tricky to phase through, but luckily corner cutting contractors have saved my ass once again. The inside security is much more lax. I'm able to walk through a couple corridors without being seen, phase through a couple walls, and repeat. The tanks here look real impressive. If I had the time I'd try my hand at sabotage, but that was never the priority here.
I find Taylor's room on the second floor in a relatively secure spot. Too bad for her this is me we're talking about. I ghosted through the wall opposite her and now I'm free to do as I please.
*THUD*
Motherfucker! Where did that bedroll come from? Ah, who cares. There wasn't anybody in it, and it didn't wake Taylor up. Just gotta get up and- Ah, fuck! My kidney! I whirl around with my elbow feeling a satisfying crunch, only to not see anybody when I do. I narrow my eyes. Something fucky's going on here.
A few seconds of staring into the air later, I hear something behind me. I reflexively turn into shadow as a blanket tries to drape itself over me.
"Shadow Stalker?" A bleary voice says behind me. "The fuck are you doing out of pris-" I tackle her to cut her off. She sinks into the bed and takes a few punches before I feel myself getting dragged off her. I kick off wildly behind me, but this gives ol' Tay-bear a chance to draw an old timey dagger from under her pillow. She tries to sink it into my shoulder, but I just phase out of the way. This has the unfortunate side effect of putting me on the bottom, but luckily I have my powers, and it seems she wants to talk a little bit.
"What the hell is going on here Sophia!? You're alone, against a capable combatant, and deep in enemy territory! I figured you would've held a grudge, but I didn't think you'd be suicidal about it!" I pick myself up and turn around, taking in the bedraggled and bleeding form of my foe. Goddamn, where the fuck is the justice in this! She's actually prettier than when she was on TV. Even like this.
"Its actually pretty simple. The PRT wants something of yours. I was sent to get it." As I slowly sit up.
"Go get help." The hell? "Don't argue this! You're wounded and I can last long enough for backup." Well whatever. I'm almost in position to throw myself back into the fight. She obligingly waits a few more seconds for me to get in position. That's when I'm distracted by the door opening and closing.
The instant I look away from her she's on me. All savage punches, and testing stabs. This is not at all what I expected from her. She got real good at this since I last saw her. No wasted movements or fatigue buildup. Lots of hesitation though. I can tell she never trained with a knife, and isn't quite sure how bad she wants to hurt me with it. Couple times I phased past her and she could've nailed me on the temple with the hilt and didn't. Comes with scoring your kills from a distance I guess. I'm also cheating so hard with my power right now. Every time she gets me in a compromising position, I phase out of it and take advantage of her overextension.
I'm not exactly sure how many seconds or minutes we were fighting, but she eventually screws up bad. I'm able to hyperextend her elbow to force her on her knees. Her dagger clatters to the ground. I kick it away before she can pick it up with her off hand.
"Motherfucker! Well, you got me I guess. What's your plan now Sophia?" I reach for a piece of jagged metal I picked up on the way here.
"Well the new Director wanted me to get the chemical formula for that fancy blood clotter from you." I drag it roughly across her throat. "Personally I don't plan on giving him the satisfaction." I whisper in her ear. She responds by gurgling, wildly thrashing, and collapsing in pain as I twist her injured arm. I make sure to keep her firmly pointed away from me during it all. First lesson I learned in my nazi hunting days. Never let the arterial spray splash onto you. Its just a massive pain to wash out.
Once she's sufficiently bled out I phase out of the room and start working my way towards a conjoined wall. Seems I've poked the hive somehow. Lots more activity making it's way over to Taylor's room. Eh, whatever. Not my problem anymore. I easily make it over to the other building, and from there a roof access. A few blocks later I'm sitting down, enjoying the simple rush of being the one left alive while the other guy isn't. Its been way too long.
"Shadow Stalker? Shadow Stalker, report! The entire building is crawling with activity! Did you achieve your objective?" Then there's this asshole again.
"Sure did Director! Killed that bitch real good!" A few seconds of glorious silence.
"Excuse me?"
"Made sure I was caught on camera too. Think my Protectorate uniform will come out nice?"
"I don't know what you're trying to pull-"
"I think I'm fucking you Calvert. I think I'm fucking you real good. Have a nice life." I pull out the earpiece, and start running across the rooftops again. I still have a few caches around town. Do some hitchhiking on the interstate after retrieving my cash and shit, and I'll be home free.
"Operation is a no go." Son of a bitch. Well, there's always next time.
"Am I still getting that six months off my sentence?"
"Of course." Comes the silky smooth voice. Asshole.
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