- Pronouns
- They/Them
That's not a phrase I know the meaning of!
Rats (A Worm AU)
- Thread starter The Laurent
- Start date
That's not a phrase I know the meaning of!
Voluntarily feminized, I am assuming.
- Pronouns
- She/Her
I would now like to present you all with the Dorleycord forcefem scale:
I guess this would count as nudgefem.
- Location
- United Kingdom
- Pronouns
- She/Her
I would now like to present you all with the Dorleycord forcefem scale:
I guess this would count as nudgefem.
On a scale of 1 to 7 how based is the forcefem in your work…
Half Moon
In the end, there is no end.
- Pronouns
- She/Her
This was an unexpected delight. The AU is fascinating. And I do love seeing Taylor be scary.
I do know the feeling.
I am increasingly suspecting that Emma has a Trump power.
Poison 1.5--(Taylor)
New
- Pronouns
- They/Them
Poison 1.5--Taylor
November 9th, 2010
It turned out, I was right about Kintsugi. She, and wow that was a good guess, believed in making a better world just like I did and agreed with my goals. She was a good person despite her circumstances, and I'd managed to convince her to work with me to do heroism and community service. But I needed more than that. I needed to see her hideout and figure out exactly what her power was. (I probably needed to think about the fact that she was also scared of me, but… that was normal? You feared the world and the world feared and hated you… she just didn't know that I was different.)
Luckily, it wasn't hard to ask to see where she was tinkering. I didn't want to assume she was unhoused. Most Asian refugees had homes, and the media's the one that pushed the whole "homeless criminals" thing. But the way she looked at me, I thought maybe they were the same thing. Either way, if we were working together,we need a lair. I had the start of an idea, but I couldn't be clear on it. I needed to know things that weren't safe to talk about here. We walked down the streets, weaving our way through the city.
Brockton Bay was a heck of a city. It was a city that had entire noir series written about it, because if there's any city where 'forgetting it' might be the best answer, wouldn't it be Brockton Bay? Between the Nazis and everything else, it just was a cruel place, and the streets, especially as you go further away from Alliance territory, were rough and needed help. If any city screamed, if any city was one long dying scream of agony it was Brockton Bay. Even in Alliance territory they mostly just fixed potholes and encouraged ride-sharing, doing what they could to staunch the bleeding.
But the other thing about Brockton Bay was that it was low-slung, it sprawled out and rested against the shoreline like a tired man in a recliner. It was strangely warm, and so even in November there were people out and about as we made our way deeper into the territory that the Alliance couldn't help and that few people wanted, the kinds of places where unpowered gangs were the order of the day. There was not anything less cruel about a gang without superhuman powers. But I understood why Isa would go to areas like this, because if she needed to defend herself from them she could. But they hired capes, every so often. Would Grue help out in some scheme to kidnap a Tinker? I hoped not, because if he would it meant that he was not available to recruit, and him and Bitch were the two I knew the Alliance was after. There were others, and maybe some of them could be hired against Isa, but…
She was a Tinker. She and Leet were the only two independent Tinkers in all of Brockton Bay. They could command about any price they wanted for their aid and so someone would have to be very arrogant, like Lung was, to think they could just order her around. I hadn't even dreamed of trying to demand she be somehow junior to me, she was my equal and partner in heroism! She had to be, or I was alone.
As we walked along the streets, trying not to seem like we were paying too much attention to everyone else--while we were of course looking for anyone in ABB gang colors (I tried to remember all the different gang colors that made them up)--I thought about what we needed to do. First, I needed to leave a message for my Dad.
Mom had died on a cellphone while driving, and so for a while Dad had forbidden either of us from having cellphones. But the city was too dangerous for that, so I had an old fliphone with enough minutes that if I did use it to try to have a social life I wouldn't last long. It was useful only for emergency calls, and so that's what I did right now, turning it on and calling. It went to the apartment's landline, and so I just said, "Hey Dad, going somewhere with a friend. Should be back later tonight. I'll… figure out dinner myself. I love you, talk to you later." They say that the famed Protectorate Tinker, Armsmaster, was working on a lie detector. I wondered if any of what I said counted as a lie. No, I wondered if all of it did. Friend, love, all of it. I was not going to be able to answer that and and and--
I stopped myself, taking a deep breath, and I focused on what mattered: making sure the Alliance couldn't get to Kintsugi.
"There we go. I figured… I could grab some fast food to go?" A restaurant would take too long, and if we were seen together someone might start asking questions if they recognized me. If I was an independent now, that'd just make the informal truth formal: everyone was my enemy, nobody outside of whatever I built could be trusted. However, I knew enough to know that service workers at a fast food restaurant had better things to do than care about the people who bought their food, like being underpaid and doing just as much work as they were made to. There were exceptions, but it was the least unsafe choice. I still brooded about it as I watched Isa's reaction.
Isa's eyes lit up, and I knew that she'd been a little bit nervous about all of this. My offer to get food would no doubt help, because I… suspected that Isa didn't have a lot of money and if she really was homeless, leaving school would mean no more food security. I didn't have much either, but money for fast food was not beyond me. At least so far nobody had noticed us. There weren't even any uniformed E88 members patrolling in their cars, nobody was paying us or this area any mind. I licked my lips. "I'll pay," I added.
"Yeah, that. That'd be great," Isa said, voice going high for a moment, as if she was trying to mix up her voice without any voice training. It didn't really work like that, but I could probably find a way to get her some of that as well, depending on whether she had a laptop or not. Probably not, but depending on her power maybe we could get her one for cheap that she could repair. I wasn't sure. I needed to help her, because I was all she had. The world sucked, and people like us had to stick together. I didn't know if she'd betray me, but I ahd to assume we were in it for the long haul. Long enough that maybe when things calmed down I could tell Isa she could have much better hair with just a slight change of shampoo, though I'd never call it boysoap to her face, too dysphoric to think of it that way.
But for all the ways I didn't pass, I had good hair. Had to have good something, as much as I tried. And she'd probably want to know about that. Sure, she hadn't begun transitioning, but she'd trusted me with that secret. So, I was going to help her even if she hadn't agreed to work with me. I could imagine what she'd look like, cleaned up, with a year or two for hormones to do their magic. She'd look like Jocelyn Hana as "Hime" Jessica in Freakouts, the early 2000s instant-classic horror movie.
"So, hmm, what do you like to eat when you're getting fast food?"
"Fried chicken," Isa said, after a moment's hesitation, voice low.
"Oh, I'd have to go slightly up town to grab it, a block or two, but ever had Jones' Chicken?" I asked. "Mom and I used to go there all the time."
Isa's eyes were wide, though I wasn't sure why, and she nodded eagerly. "Sure, that sounds great."
"I'll go in and grab it, that way nobody sees you," I said. Jones' Chicken was owned by a local, and while plenty of Alliance members swore by it it wasn't an Alliance front business. Mostly. They did report anyone who came into their establishment with the wrong sort of tattoo, but that was just self-defense. The Alliance dealt with those sorts of people, part of community defense and all of that good stuff. "What do you like? Dark meat, light meat? Breasts, thighs, wings?"
"Dark meat, I guess?" Isa said. She said it like a question, and I nodded. I'd figure something out. Maybe one of those value baskets. I wasn't made of money, but I should splurge a little since it was a new partnership and… well, if we did start doing heroing I could probably call all of this business meals in my head.
"Right, so let's go." I grinned at that, and we marched up the streets towards our destination: the best fried chicken you can get fast food style in Brockton Bay.
Jones' Chicken was not famous for its aesthetic, which was white and red, kind of diner-like, very faux-Americana, the kind of thing that comes out of a catalog. No, it was famous for its chicken. Its chicken was about the best I'd ever had, and I knew at least a little bit of that was going there with my family sometimes, or picking it up. Mom liked every kind of food you could pick up and eat, because she was always running somewhere to do something. I… I had too many good memories not to feel odd stepping in and going towards the counter.
Wendell, one of the Alliance seniors from Winslow, was there. He worked here part-time, saving up money because he wanted to go away for college. The Alliance had funds for this sort of thing… but they wouldn't be enough, depending on where he was headed. "Oh," the tall boy said, blinking at me, "Getting something for dinner?"
…okay, so there was small talk.
"Yes," I said, and then added, "I promise I won't microwave it if it gets cold." Mr. Jones hated anyone who heated up his food afterwards that sort of way rather than some other, better method, and it was a long enough walk that if I was going home I might have to do that. "I'd like a family value meal, primarily dark meat… green beans, slaw, mashed potatoes and gravy, sweet corn, biscuits…" I was pointing up towards the red and white board where all the prices were listed. It was not a cheap meal, relatively speaking. But I think Isa would like it. I couldn't help but grin, thinking that.
"Right, right, that'll be…"
The transactions were as they were. Perhaps there was no ethical consumption under capitalism, but this would be very tasty and it was a fair enough price all things considered. Wendell, though, at the end hesitated a moment and said, "Doing alright? Your best friend, Emma, she was asking around about you today, and we didn't see you?" He tensed a bit because he'd heard all sorts of bad rumors about me, and plenty of Alliance kids half-believed some of them. He had to know I wasn't a traitor, but.
But it was easy to believe things about your 'fellow' members of the Alliance, because it wasn't as if there weren't flaws and failings that dogged the Alliance. If there hadn't been, I wouldn't be here, plotting to recruit people out from under them.
"Oh, I was just keeping my head down," I lied, because he was a good kid but what if this was all some Emma plot to ambush me? She'd done something like that before, though it'd never gone 'too far' by some bullshit standard. "Someone said something about the ABB being on the warpath."
"Oh, yeah, I think they were?" Wendell said. "Good on you. Order will be up soon."
I walked out, not quite whistling but in a very good mood as I went back to Isa, holding a fucking feast in a bag.
"And, here we go."
"...are you sure? That's a lot of food," Isa said. Then she hesitated and said, "No, actually, yes, definitely."
I realized what she'd done and almost burst out laughing. She'd almost accidentally declined food because some part of her was 'supposed' to and then realized that she didn't actually want to decline. It was just a moment's politeness, but I grinned and said, "We have to share it, but this is just a start."
"I like the sound of that," Isa said, any sort of false humility or politeness slipped off like so much chaff.
She sounded better without it.
We made our way back through the city. It was still early enough that there wasn't really much risk of anything, and the direction we were going seemed to be towards the derelict apartments that had been caught in a cycle of condemnation and revival for… longer than I'd been alive. I remember reading about them, they'd been built during the 80s, condemned during the 90s but saved by community activism, and then as the world economy entered the toilet but before the death flush of 2005, they'd been condemned again. And this time it was the end of it. When the big crash came, who had the strength to fight for that when there were other apartments?
Other places.
I didn't remember the name specifically, but I remembered the set of buildings. I remembered because there'd been some documentary someone had been putting together since… since before Mom died, about the apartments.
Just another story of many.
Of course, the E88 had their "answers" about why it all went to heck. I looked at the crumbling building and knew there had to be other squatters around besides Isa. But she probably could guard herself well, and… oh. I had figured out an answer to a question of if Isa was homeless or not. Isa seemed remarkably nervous, crossing through this run-down area with buildings that should be demolished but wouldn't anytime soon.
"Right," I said. "So, do you?"
"I live here," Isa confessed. She blinked, as if she was confused by the thought. But if she was homeless, would she…? No, no point in speculating right now.
We were, I knew, quite a sight. We went up those moldering stairs as if we were being stalked and hunted by our certain doom. Indie horror films loved the fact that so much was moldering, whether in Brockton Bay or elsewhere, because they made great sets. You could believe any sort of monstrous evil lurked in a place like this, and there'd actually been a decent film or two set in buildings like this in Brockton Bay. Limited release, and I remembered a filmmaker who'd almost died doing it, but horror was horror.
We looked left and right, as we walked up, past some of the worst imaginable wallpaper. If wallpaper could be sold it would have been even more peeled off, but as it was, it had darkened so that the whole thing looked like… okay, there we go. I knew the comparison I wanted to make.
In one interview, George Starvode commented on his inspiration for the walls of the titular house in the cult classic "The Kindly House." They were inspired by one of his son's video games: the textures hadn't loaded properly, and so looked like a colored blur. This place was like that, only it came from how dirty it was and the man-made horrors of capitalism, rather than anything supernatural, let alone Starvode's metaphor about families.
…what was I thinking? Oh, right. We went up one floor, to the second floor, and then we went right. I got what was going on, the right way was not the one you'd see and so if you were just charging in you'd go to the first floor or the top floor, and then if you were charging around, you'd keep up the momentum up the stairs and keep on going left.
It wouldn't help if there was someone searching methodically for Isa, but I could tell from the way she was looking around that she was exactly paranoid enough to search for even the smallest possible advantages in a crisis situation. It made me like her even more as she went up to what seemed like a random door, intact but having no other virtue, and took out her key.
She turned the knob in strange ways while moving the key one way and then the other, and I glanced away once I realized that for all that she trusted me, a part of her was afraid of losing the information about how to get in… so, I'd just knock if I needed in. At least for now. When she opened it she had to push. The door glided open, yes, but it was clearly at least a little bit heavy. I wondered whether she'd weighed the balance between taking an extra moment to get open for her, and the weight that would stop others from easily battering it down.
She must have, but I remembered what my Mom had said once, in one of those… moments where I had to ask myself after the fact how involved she was. "If someone bars the door well enough, then you start breaking through the windows and the walls." Spoken from experience? Dad always said that Mom wasn't involved in the rougher side of things, but was that just one of those lies that you tell children?
I was sure Isa had thought through all of it, I didn't know what I was worried about. Or maybe I did. She was a good person who wanted to do good and had a power that seemed like it'd let her do damage directly or well make something that did damage directly, but those were the same thing with tinkers. I had a power that worked indirectly and relied on me being very good at guessing what people feared. She flipped on a light and I stepped in.
It was larger than I expected. Once, this apartment had been meant to be a place of the future, I realized. Somewhere where an entire family, and not a small one, was meant to be able to try to do their best to make it work.
It was clear that this was Isa's first home, or that's what it seemed like. A real attempt to build something genuine, a shelter from the storm. The living room was that and a bedroom, the kitchenette not a separate room but divided by a messy looking counter. The decor was seemingly anything that could be found, with a couch that was light and thus probably not that soft, but with huge throw pillows. The chairs at the 'dining table' on the other hand were rough and crude, and she walked over and looked around.
A really, really nice futon was sitting on a bedframe that absolutely had not been made for it. The pillows and blankets made the whole thing look like the most comfortable warren imaginable. The only thing it lacked were some stuffed animals to really bring it together.
Everything lacked something to bring it together, but everything there also looked so good. It was a carnival, it was a funhouse, colors blending and blurring into something odd. And then when I started to pay attention, the scene got only odder. There were nice cabinets that had bags hanging off the side from nails. Indeed, everything had little pockets here and there, and all of them held… oh. I walked over to one and looked in. Tools.
And then I realized: tools to repair them and anything nearby.
"So, here it is," Isa said, while I moved around the house. "Me casa… su… something?"
"Right, right," I said, and then… oh. There are the plushies. They're hidden under the bed. There were entire containers filled with them, and one of them was open, and they were all seemingly in different states of repair once I poked around. Every time I looked a little closer I found more and more to see. It was not a hoarders' nightmare but more as if more and more stuff had been slowly accumulating. It was fascinating, really, and I found myself staring eagerly. "So, we should get to the food while it's still warm."
I wanted to explore, but I had the food that she wanted and so I settled down at the closest thing to a kitchen table. The chair didn't wobble, as a part of me had feared. No doubt she had used the… hammer and nails and hand-saw that were hanging from a bag off the corner of the table… had used those things to fix it up.
"Yeah," Isa said, and we both sat down as I began to divide things out.
"Do you have any plates?"
"Oh, right! Plates and… what else?"
"Bowls for some of this, too," I said, watching as she hurried over to get what she needed. While she was doing that I said, "So after we eat, there's plenty to talk about, including your power. I got some of it, sure, but I don't think I fully understand it. I know, boring official stuff, but." I gestured broadly as I settled into the moment and began dividing out the food. First out was the napkins, Jones knew chicken wasn't easy on the hands, and packed it to match. Maybe I should have been environmentally worried but like… it was plastics and oils and coal that was gonna kill us, not tree products. Next out came-
Well next out came the smell. The wafting aroma of fried chicken, the heady mix of Meat and Spices and oil and carbs that was literally mouth watering. But the first actually edible thing was the biscuits. The trip had cooled the box a little, they aren't hot enough to steam hot to steam, but still warm and flaky and just as filled with oil as everything else. Mr. Jones insisted that his biscuits weren't as good as what you could find 'back home' in the south, which he described as a mythic land of great cooking and rural racism that seemed to mix into nostalgia and 'glad to be gone' at once. I wondered if I would ever talk about BB like that if I left? Not that I was. I was stuck here, and I planned to be stuck here to whatever end.
Next out were the potato skins, not fries, that were crisped, and the baked beans for the side. Then, finally it came out. The star of the show. The mountain of chicken that had left the box near bursting. Still how, and crispy and absolutely unhealthy in the best way that you could see it glisten with spices that could clean your nose without eating it. It was probably shortening a year off my life every time I ate there, but what a year it was. I was a cape now, I'd die long before it was a problem.
I divided the food quickly. Once we started eating I didn't intend to be one of those people who ate while chatting up a storm. I had time, and so I just smiled. "Welp, here's to a new partnership."
It was less time later than it should have been. Isa ate ravenously and I wasn't going about it as daintily as I would have preferred because it was just so good. I sat there, wiping my face and licking my lips, as I considered what to talk about. "So what does your power do, exactly?"
"It lets me… fix what's broken. I can tell when something is broken, and how, and how to fix it. And that includes Tinkertech, even Tinkertech that's used up. And if it's something that can be built, I can make more of it."
I stared at her for a long moment. "Including things Leet made?" Everyone knew that for some reason or other Leet was obsessed with reinventing the wheel, doing the same bit of Tinker stuff five different ways to fit different video-game aesthetics. If she could repeat what he did, then that alone would…
"Yes. Which is why he tried to have me axed," Isa said. "That has to be it. I was trying to work through him, set up a sale, because he's the broker, right? You're supposed to go to the people who matter and let them have their cut or they'll have it out of your flesh."
I frowned at that, "So, he betrayed you?"
"Pretty sure, or he's too scared of Lung." Isa's terror was obvious in the way she wasn't trying to show it. The less one tried to show fear like that, the more obvious it was that it was rampant and creeping up to take over every moment. Isa was someone who lived with fear… which wasn't that unusual for Parahumans. Honestly, it was just normal and natural. I'd find someone who didn't live their entire life filled with fear and anxiety kinda weird? No wonder Lung had reacted the way he had.
"No, it's not that. Or… it's not just that. If he was just afraid of Lung, you wouldn't talk about being 'axed' would you?" I thought about it, nibbling at a biscuit in my spare moments, nervously playing with the little bit of food that was left. "No, he betrayed you, and so… we should make him pay. He's also the only Tinker out there that's not with the Protectorate in the city. He gets shipments coming in from Tinkers elsewhere and sells them off for more, but here? He's a King. A terrible, clout-chasing King."
He'd buy some Tinkertech for a thousand and resell it for two, that sort of thing, because he was the one who could trade with people outside the city or do some of the more generic work in maintaining it, or all sorts of little tricks that made him the neutral arbiter, the one who talked to Faultline, which might as well be the same thing as talking to the world. Faultline was known to the world, or at least the world that cared, as an efficient mercenary in charge of an experienced crew. But she did not "shit where she ate" or any of that, which meant that in Brockton Bay she was a nightclub owner, a pillar of the Parahuman community.
If Leet picked sides, or even folded like a cheap suit to the likes of Lung, he would no longer be that. He wouldn't be trusted even if he'd done it under duress, and if he had he'd surely have told Faultline's crew by now. Lung was dangerous and terrifying, but there was a balance to these things. If he could get away with it, he would. But having failed to get away with it… or did anyone know? For all they knew, Kintsugi was going to be showing up any day now?
How might they try to explain the warehouse fire?
I wasn't sure, but I had an idea. I frowned and nodded, "Okay, I have a proposal. We should rob Leet blind. Find his lab where he has all the intermediary stuff, including the Tinkertech from outside the city, and take all of it. Every last thing he has, let him start from absolutely nothing while you can build up the kind of Tinker arsenal capable of making yourself the go-between." I smiled at the thought of that. "One with a team. And if you're not accepted as an intermediary, or anything else, you at least have a team to protect you. So that's what we have to do, break Uber and Leet and storm their fortress."
Isa looked nervous, "A Tinker's workshop is supposed to be locked up tight and dangerous to everyone else. Mine… isn't really quite like that, but it's not a safe place for people even though I don't have much."
"We'll have to see how much is 'not much' but we're going to be gathering allies. Grue and… erm, sorry to say her name is Bitch, they've both been holding out against Alliance entreaties to join up. We offer them a job and a cut, and then that's four Parahumans, if we can convince them. And then maybe one or two more?" I thought that perhaps one of the independent villains could be convinced, or one of the vigilantes. There were a few of each that I could think of off the top of my head. The difficulty was figuring out how to recruit them. But even before I'd thought of the idea with the heist, I'd been looking them up.
With a power like mine but no way to know people's fears but to guess right, I had to do a lot of research to figure out how I'd use it. It encouraged me to think, which was something that I knew was vital to all Parahumans. But I could be shot and killed by any yahoo with a gun. There were rules of sorts, guidelines and more, but none of them stopped the occasional cape from getting gunned down. The Empire Eighty-Eight could pretend to follow the rules all they liked, they'd still break them the moment it became convenient. They'd done it before. The unwritten rules were not worth as much as capes wished they were in a place like Brockton Bay.
"What about you? What's your power? I didn't exactly get to see whatever you did. You made him act like he did, but… what was it?" Isa's voice was quiet and a little bit careful, as if she was afraid I'd take offense at explaining myself in too much detail. I wasn't going to hide anything from an ally.
"I can send people to Hades, giving them visions… and a little bit more, of their worst fears and nightmares, and while there I can add more details as it goes on," I said.
"Wait, a little bit more? Can it hurt people?"
"It feels like it can," I said, frowning. I hadn't really thought about that aspect. "Not as much as it 'should.'" If I could just kill Lung by having a Phantom Endbringer drown him, I might be forced to do so. I'd certainly have to do so for the likes of Kaiser, I'd stand no choice otherwise with such a wimpy power.
"Can you only target one person at a time?"
"I'm not sure. It feels like I could perhaps target more, but it's a very focused ability," I said. Isa was asking good questions, looking at me eagerly, clearly trying to see the limits and strengths of my abilities. "Adding more people would mean trying to find a Hades that fit them all. And it strains me more. But I wonder if I could train myself to improve it." Nobody used their Parahuman powers to their greatest extent as soon as they got them, it took months or years to find every trick one could do or every way one could leverage a power. Sometimes more. "Right now, though, we have to assume I can mostly target one person. But the longer it goes on the stronger it feels like it could get. But I don't know how strong."
"Ah, lovely," Isa said a little faintly.
"Fear is an underestimated tool in warfare," I said, "And in insurgency too." I was playing it up, drawing on that fear, and it felt good even though I was overstating things.
Isabella looked just a little bit nervous at that, and I realized I would have to perhaps cool the phrasing for just a little bit. I was part of an insurgency, half the city was captured by Nazis and while they did not own the mayor, they owned half the city council and more. This was without even getting into the larger situation in America, the ongoing malaise and collapse.
So, I'd have to focus on the hero language. "Heroes need to be able to do the unexpected. So… what kind of Tinkertech do you have? If you don't want me to go into your workshop, I can wait here to see what you bring out."
Isa snorted. "You've bought me food and you're going to give me hormones. You get to see the, the…"
"Batcave," I suggested.
"The what? Are there bats in most Tinker workshops?" Isa asked.
"Well, there's bats in most caves."
"And most Tinkers operate in caves?" Isabella was frowning now.
"You know what, nevermind," I said, feeling like an idiot.
"No, no, I'm sure it…" Isa protested, eyes wide, as if I was going to, I dunno, bully her for not knowing about semi-obscure Earth Aleph media. (It had also been Earth Bet media, but it'd lost popularity in the 80s and 90s and was basically dead. Of course, Earth Aleph was basically dead so after the post-Empty Summer revival when people were able to buy up Aleph properties for pennies on the dollar--sometimes from actual literal starving refugees, because of fucking course--and so there'd been a few years where the entertainment industry got a boost. But even with all of that, there'd only been a single Batman movie, a Superman movie, and… I think a few on other superheroes, before people had moved on. I hadn't liked them, not like weird arthouse horror movies or horror novels or horror video games or… okay, actually just anything related to horror, but at least Batman understood how fear worked! Superstitious and cowardly indeed.)
"Don't worry, I'm just being weird. It's nerd stuff," I said. "Let's go."
The workbench in the crowded room looked fake. I'd been around handy people or people who liked to think they were handy all my life. No bench was that smooth and flawless, and for that matter that neatly organized, with every tool in a proper place and each tool the most perfect version of it. There were Dads that would give years of their life to have this kind of setup, and there was just so much in the way of stuff. There was what looked like those fancy coffee drippers, but the liquid coming out was colorful rather than, well, coffee. There was what looked like a gun except it had far too many bits of plastic and so on… wait, was that one of Marquis' Tinkertech blasters? He gave his men the best of the best because they were elites, and he could afford to bypass Leet and just go straight to the Toybox.
They were the ones that helped back up the 'not crimes' when it came time to turn them into something more. And she had one of their guns, and if she had one she could make others, given time.
Off to one side, drawing my attention even more, were phones. Dozens and dozens of phones and two laptops, all in different states of repair.
"I, well, I was thinking that someone would buy phones," Isa said. "If I fixed them back up."
"Burner phones," I said quietly, trying to keep the awe from my voice. We could take old 2000s phones and have about as many possible burner phones as we could ever need, we could…"
The more I thought, the more I was staggered by her power. Mine wasn't that impressive, even if I had some clever ideas for what I could do with it to make up for how incredibly weak it was. But her power? Isa could change everything, especially if her fixes didn't need upkeep the way a lot of Tinkertech did. And… maybe they wouldn't, if she made sure to fix things the normal way. It wasn't as if the paint she'd been fixing up would start to peel without her. This could change everything.
I'd thought this was just a little bit a desperate gamble, but no. I think we could legitimately do something amazing. We could kick so much ass. She hadn't even shown me everything she had, but I couldn't help it. I started to laugh, half-doubling over as it kept up, "We…" I said through the laughter, "We're going to really do this, and Leet won't know what hit him."
She watched me with concern as I tried to fight off the body-shaking laughter that came out just a little bit more manic than I expected, because I was already imagining right now just how we could take on everyone and win.
Brockton Bay would not know what hit it!
TL AN: Taylor's plan is Perfect. Perfect!
Clockwork AN: the beta entertainment industry (the owners) benefited from the influx of high quality shows
The beta entertainment industry (creators) crashed from the influx of cheap show from alpha made during the 80/90s, as well as the focus on remakes that could now be made much more cheaply… there was also a kerfluffle about paying Earth Aleph refugees low salaries since plenty of them were not part of any (Earth Bet) guild/union for actors as a way to make the product even cheaper.
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Flairina
Least Omnipotent Goddess
- Location
- The next infinity over
I mean yeah, obviously! It just requires her and Isa to go storm a tinker's fortress, take everything in it, and either encounter no resistance or just roll over it when it finds them! Shouldn't be a problem at all, it's so simple! A foolish person might even say, short-sighted! But that's just the genius inherent in her plan. Why complicate it with things like "contingencies"? You come up with those on the fly when things go wrong, not beforehand!
Think you're missing a word here; sentence reads very confusingly as is.
- Pronouns
- She/Her
The brainworms are a nice authentic touch, and Taylor going into Sponsor Mode made me cackle.
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Taylor is so cute and earnest with isa. Though you can see the deep brain worms from both her upbringing and Emma. You also made her feel like much ofr af a geek/nerd than canon so well done there.
- Location
- The Internet?
We get to see more of Isa's work! And Taylor's trying to coax her out of her shell? Wonderful stuff! Thank you for sharing with us!
Likewise, oblivious Taylor continues to be hilarious. 'Of course I would never issue a command-' Isa POV: 'Boss Taylor isn't even going to tell me what to do, I just have to figure out what she wants and do it!'
And Taylor, you're trying to get her to hitch to your wagon, but I feel like you're the one trying to attach your U-Haul. 'Show me your place, it's a dinner date! And together, we shall rule the Bay!!!' All she's missing is the thunderclaps as she monologues.
And why is Taylor wondering about boy's hope? She's going to be fighting Leet, not paying him any Troll Toll!
And here's Isa wondering about what sort of mob business Taylor's mom got up to at this front for the Alliance. She probably watched Lustrum cut all sorts of deals, and maybe they even whacked some dirty rats... or just re-enacted the plot of The Departed.
Wait a second... if Taylor is a mafia princess, and the Alliance pushes back against the Empire and actually tries to protect people that aren't Nazis/Nazi adjacent...
Does that mean that Earth Bet actually has a woke mob?
Everyone's heads turned away from Victor to look at Kaiser, who let his face fall into his palm with the metallic clang of mask on gauntlet. "Victor, what did we say about draining the skills of economists, sociologists, and anthropologists?"
"...Don't?"
"Good man. Focus on things that are actually useful to the cause, like gun fu- er, I mean, gun kata, I mean fighting with guns, and explosives. Because nothing says a better city like blowing parts of it up!"
"Well, he leeched the skin off of another PA. Let's call it lunch, and try again after."
Later
"Ms. Night, Ms. Night, the motion activated cameras caught some terrific shots, but if you could- oh, you're getting a pen out from under your cloak, is that a grenade?"
"You know, when I got out of the military, I thought I'd be done writing these condolences letters. Who knew indie filmmaking was so cut-throat? What do you mean 'that's just how the Nazis are?'"
And shame on you two for making me hungry. Leftover Halloween candy isn't quite delicious amazing chicken, but it will have to do.
love are terrified of!
Clearly Leet's an incredibly easy mark, having survived independent of the gangs, Protectorate, and Alliance for who knows how long. Attacking him where he lives/works will have no real consequences. Unlike the unwritten rules that will totally protect Taylor and Isa. So what if Leet (and his pal Uber) has far more experience as a Cape, equipment, and a connection with Faultline (and her team)? Really, them completely wiping out Leet's supply of Tinkertech is just restitution for Leet trying to screw Isa over (so far as we know). Honestly, they should just leave things out on the stoop for Isa to swing by and grab.
By the way, what do we think? Is Isa sticking with Kintsugi or is she going to come up with something of her own to distance herself from Lung?
Need a space after the comma here.
I mean... considering a lotta noirs are set in the 40s... yeah, the presence of Nazis tracks.
Taylor, that's just the hellmouth. I'd say don't sweat it, but it can get hot in the summertime.
Do you want to slip another word in here, like 'They could command just about any price..?'
Likewise, oblivious Taylor continues to be hilarious. 'Of course I would never issue a command-' Isa POV: 'Boss Taylor isn't even going to tell me what to do, I just have to figure out what she wants and do it!'
Taylor, your trust/control issues are showing.
I think you mean 'had' there.
And Taylor, you're trying to get her to hitch to your wagon, but I feel like you're the one trying to attach your U-Haul. 'Show me your place, it's a dinner date! And together, we shall rule the Bay!!!' All she's missing is the thunderclaps as she monologues.
I was gonna say that you could slip the word 'that' in between those two words, but someone Imp'd me to it!
And why is Taylor wondering about boy's hope? She's going to be fighting Leet, not paying him any Troll Toll!
I know that Taylor's been living in her uptown world, but she should know that it could probably be one word, here, right?
And here's Isa wondering about what sort of mob business Taylor's mom got up to at this front for the Alliance. She probably watched Lustrum cut all sorts of deals, and maybe they even whacked some dirty rats... or just re-enacted the plot of The Departed.
Wait a second... if Taylor is a mafia princess, and the Alliance pushes back against the Empire and actually tries to protect people that aren't Nazis/Nazi adjacent...
Does that mean that Earth Bet actually has a woke mob?
I'm probably off, but should there be, like, ellipses or something, instead of just the one period? To me it reads like Taylor's trailing off for the emphasis, but...
"...Poor fiscal planning on the part of government officials, and a lack of maintaining social safety nets?"
Everyone's heads turned away from Victor to look at Kaiser, who let his face fall into his palm with the metallic clang of mask on gauntlet. "Victor, what did we say about draining the skills of economists, sociologists, and anthropologists?"
"...Don't?"
"Good man. Focus on things that are actually useful to the cause, like gun fu- er, I mean, gun kata, I mean fighting with guns, and explosives. Because nothing says a better city like blowing parts of it up!"
"Mr. Fog, Mr. Fog! You were perfect drifting slowly closer to us. I'm just going to roll down this window a little bit more... Could we just have you sign this release so we can use the footag-aggghhh..."
"Well, he leeched the skin off of another PA. Let's call it lunch, and try again after."
Later
"Ms. Night, Ms. Night, the motion activated cameras caught some terrific shots, but if you could- oh, you're getting a pen out from under your cloak, is that a grenade?"
"You know, when I got out of the military, I thought I'd be done writing these condolences letters. Who knew indie filmmaking was so cut-throat? What do you mean 'that's just how the Nazis are?'"
I'm probably overthinking it, but it might scan better if you slip another word in somewhere, like: 'taking an extra moment to get it to open for her...'
Should be a capital t for Tinkers, right?
I'll take a guess that Isa isn't fluent in Spanish, but shouldn't it be 'Mi' and not 'Me?' If it's just her flubbing the expression, that's fine, of course!
Oh Taylor, don't sell yourself short. It'll probably be lasers, zombies, Endbringers, or something even worse!
It seems as though the last three words got repeated. And the 'South' should be capitalized, yes?
There you go, now you're getting it!
And shame on you two for making me hungry. Leftover Halloween candy isn't quite delicious amazing chicken, but it will have to do.
Do you want an extra line break between these two paragraphs, as we have the back and forth of conversation with different speakers?
There's the master of clear and direct communication we all know and
'Isa' became 'Isabella' twice here. Intentional? She hadn't introduced a longer name prior, I don't think...
This is like owning an acre on the moon, or having a star named after you or something, right? Assuming the canon 'we just have communication back and forth between Earths,' it would be, at least. But with this Aleph-apocalyptic AU there's mentions of refugees, meaning likely some more permanent, prominent method of passage between the two places, so it's like owning property in Chernobyl. Which is only slightly more accessible.
Is it Truly Level? Is it Room Temperature?
Taylor was just grumping about the minutes on her clamshell, so hopefully she can get Isa to Tinkertech these phones up in addition to repairing them, especially if she's planning for guerrilla warfare.
Fear-based powers, plotting to rob someone, maniacal laughter..? Taylor, why would Isa ever think you're some sort of mafia princess? I just have no idea what could give her this sort of impression.
With the prescription on her glasses, no one could ever accuse Taylor of being short-sighted!I mean yeah, obviously! It just requires her and Isa to go storm a tinker's fortress, take everything in it, and either encounter no resistance or just roll over it when it finds them! Shouldn't be a problem at all, it's so simple! A foolish person might even say, short-sighted! But that's just the genius inherent in her plan. Why complicate it with things like "contingencies"? You come up with those on the fly when things go wrong, not beforehand!
Clearly Leet's an incredibly easy mark, having survived independent of the gangs, Protectorate, and Alliance for who knows how long. Attacking him where he lives/works will have no real consequences. Unlike the unwritten rules that will totally protect Taylor and Isa. So what if Leet (and his pal Uber) has far more experience as a Cape, equipment, and a connection with Faultline (and her team)? Really, them completely wiping out Leet's supply of Tinkertech is just restitution for Leet trying to screw Isa over (so far as we know). Honestly, they should just leave things out on the stoop for Isa to swing by and grab.
By the way, what do we think? Is Isa sticking with Kintsugi or is she going to come up with something of her own to distance herself from Lung?
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- Pronouns
- They/Them
To clarify, there's not regular transit now, but during the Empty Summer there were portals that did allow millions upon millions of refugees to flee. It was then decided that America (and the world, but it was a Protectorate Tinker who, startlingly, is the one who made them, who knows why he did so) had too many refugees and that anyone left alive on Earth Aleph would have to fend for themselves. After all, there are plenty of problems at home and who knows what kind of strange 'alternate timeline' diseases could be passed along otherwise.
Etc, etc, yada yada.
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- Pronouns
- She/Her
This is correct. There might be some weird offshoot gambler-penny stocks buying up land in Alpha, but the 'stable' investment was media properties.
- Location
- Somewhere!
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Right! Taylor is winning at projecting "you are my equal partner who I won't boss around" to Isa. Good social check here.
Taylor: I'm so glad we have such a good understanding Isa.
- Location
- USA
I'm a little lost. Is the assumption that the attack on the warehouse was targeted at Isa, instead of the ABB as a whole? And it was Leet because Leet is the only cape (minus ABB) who knows about her?
- Pronouns
- They/Them
No? I'm a little confused here. Leet sold Isa out, which is why they're after them.
- Location
- USA
Oh I think I missed a step. Are they thinking Leet told Lung about the new Tinker, and that's how Lung found and recruited them?
- Location
- Somewhere!
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Yeah - Isa was going to a meet up with/arranged by Leet and Lung showed up ready to snatch a new tinker, so Leet sold her out in some way there when he was supposed to be vetting things.
So Leet controls a Leet-net, a sort of 'tinker-secondary service' or 'we have toybox at home' type deal. Isa contacted Leet net to make the sale, and got told 'meet here to make the sale in person'. Then Lung set up at the meeting point.
At best Leet was a idiot for not seeing that coming, but more likely sold out.
Poison 1.6--(Taylor)
New
- Pronouns
- They/Them
1.6--Taylor
November 11th, 2010
The next few days were an interesting exercise in trying not to draw any attention from my Dad, Emma, or anyone else. I'd reached the point of not caring about school or any of what I now decided was my civilian life. I'd never been at that point before; even in the depths of my grades falling to pieces from the harassment, a part of me had dreamed of getting good grades and going to college and continuing my Mom's legacy in all those stupid, mundane ways. Surely, since I was nothing to Emma, she'd just let me go in peace to live a quiet life somewhere when I finally gave up and fled the state--only not the country because where else was there to go--in terror and resignation.
(A part of me had nightmares that I'd know Emma the rest of my life, that she'd always be there, watching and trying to find a way to make things worse not for any real reason, but just because it was apparently her job.)
But now, I had something bigger to dream of. I was going to save the city with my new… well, I'd say 'best friend' but that wasn't saying anything. She was my friend and I only had one, so I guess she was the best? I brought her hormones and fast food, and I was pretty sure that she valued that more than a thousand kind words.
I had plenty of hormones, because there'd been grumbling about them getting harder to get in the last year. At least a bit of that might have been Alliance excuses, but it was true that the federal government had spent the better part of the last decade cracking down on all manner of 'degeneracy.' They'd not been able to make gay marriage illegal in most states, even if they were working on it, but… this sort of thing? Well, thinking of the children was always the excuse for every terrible thing a government did in the name of the powerful. So I'd been stockpiling it as if the world was going to end and I'd just have the Fem-N-M's and spiro and everything else that I'd gotten. I'd started taking it at fourteen, after being on blockers since… well, I'd never had the puberty I 'would' have had.
I was glad of that every day because I struggled to pass anyways, a tall, awkward behemoth. I couldn't imagine what I'd look like without all the help I could get.
Anyways, the point was I had enough hormones to get her set up for years, and I could even try to do the doctor thing and increase doses once she did alright with it. Though I had no idea if she'd follow my directions or just take the maximum dose. I'd been impatient too, wanting to get it now, now now.
So I got that. She seemed just a little bit leery of me, but I was sure that this would pass once we had some more time working together. It was just a matter of making it clear I wasn't like those abusive assholes that constituted most people who would try to use her amazing powers. I wasn't perfect, but I was better than Lung, Marquis, or Leet any day of the week. And while the Alliance wasn't all bad, it had its flaws. I thought I could do better, at least in some ways. I thought I could cover where they didn't reach, and then from the outside figure out what had gone wrong that had led the Alliance astray? There were things Mom never said, but simply held in her frowns when I raved about the Alliance in purely positive terms.
She'd seen the underbelly of the beast, and she'd had fears just like I did. But maybe there was reason to work within a system if it wasn't broken. But was that the case? I had no idea.
That more than anything set me to twitching, the thought that I didn't know what I didn't know. Sure, that was obvious, but the next few days I kept on circling around on it. It was as if I had three lives. The first was at home, where I didn't talk to my Dad and we didn't understand each other, and it felt like a blur, a blank I couldn't even think of.
Then school, which I couldn't help but think about. Every minute was suffering, every moment was a distraction, an irritation. The specifics receded away, but I felt the moments and I knew that if I picked the right moment I could probably miss school for one day. But I'd need a good excuse. Well, it was November, perhaps a cold? But Dad would probably actually check. I wasn't sure what I wanted to do, but I knew that even though the Alliance let me take the fall for a bunch of rumors and exalted the likes of Sophia, they'd still be suddenly oh-so-concerned if I just stopped showing up for school. But I could make excuses to my Dad about going out with friends in the evenings.
Dad believed them, or at least he didn't say a damn thing to me. It was better to believe that I had friends then that he'd been all but gone and I'd been all but gone. I didn't talk about friends, or anything else. We talked as little as we could. Everything had been choked to death by the feeling of hopelessness and his own sorrow. It clung to him, and behind it lurked fear. So much fear.
I almost wanted to dive into it, but I also didn't trust that, because when I figured things out and then used them, it seemed to haunt me. Literally. The night after I'd exposed Isa to my powers for just a little bit, just a tiny taste, I'd had a dream about rooting through the garbage for food. I couldn't remember the details, but I remembered the taste of stale chips and the feeling of a scrape on my arm from a rusty corner of the garbage bin, the fear of tetanus and worse, the certainty that it wasn't worth it but it also wasn't not worth it. And all of this, all of this mixed with a secondary screaming that I should forget about the chips and work on repairing the rust, it was so much more pressing. I'd known at once that this was as normal and understandable a thing as could be done.
I'd woken up sure that there would be no escape but the thing that had actually disturbed me was that it was not entirely disturbing. I wondered if it was a memory, or if I was just imagining what might have happened based on what I knew. But either way there was something energizing about dreaming of the worst. It'd already begun to fade, I'd already begun to forget. I couldn't explain it, and so I decided that I'd just push it down and ignore it.
Ignoring problems was a problem in the abstract, but I'd just ignore that.
What I couldn't ignore was my research on Grue.
So first, video games were fun when they were scary, though Zork wasn't much of anything. The fact that his cape name was based on a video game could mean all sorts of things. Electric Avenue had made the idea of pop-culture-y Cape Names a little bit of a fad, so it could be that. Grues ate people in the darkness, and that was certainly what his power seemed to be able to do. It was not just regular darkness, either, because it seemed to be able to block some radio signals and noise and more. All of this meant that he could lock down an area and cause mass confusion and panic very easily.
He seemed to rely on that a lot, but why shouldn't he? If I had as useful a power as he did, I would too. It was a power that let him handle huge groups of untrained enemies and cause chaos even for experienced foes. It didn't hurt that he seemed to be trained in some sort of combat himself, and so excepting against Parahumans he was probably stronger than any single enemy he would face.
And face enemies he did. His job was best against the masses of gangs, and so he took part in minor robberies, guarded convoys of illicit goods, and acted as a bouncer at clubs some nights. He did anything and everything, and his darkness was enough to break up fights. It took a truly skilled fighter to keep on going in such circumstances. I didn't know anything about fighting, because my father was scared of his temper and my mother had no need for it. It hadn't been that I associated it with masculinity, because half of the butt-kickers of the Alliance were women, but I had associated it with… well.
I'd thought I'd always be protected, and that if I bothered to learn it still wouldn't help if I was surrounded by Nazis. If you didn't have some sort of cape power, five on one odds were always a bad idea unless you had a huge advantage: a gun to a fist-fight, martial arts training against concussed toddlers, something.
It was amazing how much you could know about fighting without having any experience at it.
Grue's power evened the odds and then some. It could turn a twenty to one fight into a cakewalk. He had an impressively powerful and flexible set of abilities, and so of course the Alliance wanted him. They wanted to recruit him because he wasn't a racist, and if they suspected they knew his little sister and could use the ties for leverage, then there was a good chance he wasn't white. He hadn't done any truly horrific crimes. At most there were a few robberies of small stores, and people could forgive a lot if you spent your time beating up Nazis.
So they wanted him. I wasn't sure if it was his best choice, but I knew that the way they were talking about his sister… It meant that they were thinking of using her. It might be benign, it was not as if there wasn't a little manipulation present in what I'd done so far. But Grue had resisted all attempts to strongarm him so far. He valued his independence, in being able to take jobs and benefit from them, more than he valued being part of something larger.
This was a guess. Or maybe he was afraid that anything too large he couldn't control. There were explanations, and I had only a bit of evidence to work on. But I knew enough to know that there was something I could promise to him that nobody else could really do, and that was that I wasn't going to ask him to join my yet-unnamed group. Maybe I hoped he'd decide he wanted to join…
Yeah, I did hope for it. A lot. I needed it, to be honest. But even if all he did was show up for the raid against Leet and then go do his own thing, that'd be more than enough to at least get whoever was willing to stick around started. It didn't take a lot of Capes to at least be able to stand up and matter, a team of three or four in the right place could tear apart enemies, with the right powers. We'd see who we wound up with. I'd been thinking about Bitch. I'd also been thinking of Circus, though there was no chance they were going to join up for good. But Circus was down for independent heists, or at least seemed like they were.
And that's what I had planned. It would include elements of an assault if need be, but the real goal was to ruin Leet and take all of his stuff. I didn't have a plan yet, because it didn't matter yet. I'd need to know who I'd have to work alongside with, and so there was no point in worrying and hurrying around panicking about the specifics yet.
…I did it anyway, of course.
But the first step was finding him, since at the moment he hadn't even agreed to talk to me. He certainly hadn't agreed to band together and work with me for even a single mission. I hadn't even met him, at the point I was worrying about this.
In order to meet him, though, I'd need a makeover.
"Hold still, I think this'll work for it," Isa said. "This is what you were asking for, right? Gas mask, black pants, black top, add the silver so it's some… stormcrow thing," Isa said, gesturing broadly. We were in the spare junk room, the one I hadn't seen before and had everything in piles and boxes, all sorts of things that couldn't be fixed up yet or hadn't even begun to be worked on but were being stored just in case. There was even a small box labeled 'Tinkertech' that I assumed were things so bad off that even she couldn't get it all fixed up. Despite how all that sounded, it wasn't dusty, and there was room to actually show off all the clothes she had.
She had a lot of clothes, and yet she was still in a hoodie and jeans, still trying to hide herself from the world. Another time I might have tried to be a tutor because I was pretty good at costumes, though it seemed like she knew plenty about clothes… sort of.
I looked down at the outfit she had prepared. It began with black pants, artfully ripped in places to reveal, no doubt, the mesh that she had sitting next to the pants. There was silver in the belt, and a chain as well, for that matter, though the odds of it being real silver was low. Similarly, the top had silver accents, metal here and there to create a picture of something strange and deadly, but also really very goth. As was the purple and black painted gas mask, which seemed more painter's mask than army surplus, and the goggles that would presumably hide my eyes. There was a pair of earrings that looked like they came from Hot Topic, a choker of all things, and what looked like enough makeup to keep a theater troupe looking good for the stage.
"Stormcrow, is that what you were going for?" I asked.
"Er… I was thinking Mall Goth vibes, right?"
"Only if the Mall Goth was about to join the Black Bloc," I said, looking at her.
"The what?"
"Black bloc?" I frowned, realizing that some of us didn't grow up with the names of famous anarchists and communists as familiar as Eeyore, Frodo, and Elizabeth Bennet. So yeah, I could explain my joke or I could just let it lay where it was. "Anarchist reference."
"Like, bombs?" Isa asked, and then her eyes went wide as she realized she was perhaps being rude. "Not that there's anything wrong with bombs…"
I gave a laugh, halfway to a cackle, but this time I didn't lose control of my laughter. "Oh, there's not, always, but it's not quite like that. We'll talk about it sometime, but… you know what, okay. I'll wear that." I was lying, because actually I loved the hell out of it and was now going to try to make a dozen costumes with her for different occasions. "I was thinking I'd have multiple costumes and I'd change between them when I needed to." This costume was something that might just barely pass as something some idiot could wear to the club, and I was a tall girl, so it wasn't as if I'd immediately be clocked as a fifteen year old Parahuman.
I needed to both have a disguise but also be able to seem like a regular non-cape, because if they thought I was a cape they'd be worried I was trying to pick a fight.
Grue wasn't the bouncer at a palace of crime like the Palanquin, where Faultline's Crew did deals all the time and where it was expected that sometimes there would be Parahumans going around in costume.
But there were other clubs, other places, and Grue was often called upon for just such a task. It was a Thursday night, but despite that it was going to be busy. But I was doing homework with a friend, a study session, or so I'd told Dad. I didn't know if there was any chance of him believing me, but it'd be nice if he did. So I was just going to hope he wasn't suspicious. If need be I could say her name, it wasn't as if that would give him any hints to work with.
"Oh, what other sorts of disguises?"
"Scary ones," I said. "But different, each of them different. It fits with my Cape Name. This specter drives mortals to madness with her airy apparitions/ as she appears in weird shapes and strange forms,/ now plain to the eye, now shadowy, now shining in the darkness--/all this in unnerving attacks in the gloom of night,'" I quoted with a grin, "Melinoë, a bringer of nightmares and madness itself."
Isa said, "What's it from? Sounds like something in some kinda game?"
"Greek myth," I said, "Not sure if it's shown up anywhere else, but it fits, doesn't it? And it'll make people think I have a more potent power than I do."
Isa nodded and said, "So, uh, should I leave you to get changed? I'll be standing outside to give a thumb's up."
"I won't be putting on the gas mask and goggles until I get a little bit closer to the club," I said. I'd looked up the club he most likely was at, and it was this rundown place, the Paradise Club, which had an ancient history that had been scrapped long ago to be replaced and recreated a half-dozen times. The history didn't matter, or rather I'd learned it in case it mattered and I was pretty sure I'd wasted my time.
"Also makeup, if you know anything about that…"
"Not really," Isa said, after a moment where it seemed like she'd try to do it anyways. "I'll, uh. Leave you to it."
She was red-faced, and that was something I'd have to think about later. I didn't have time to think about what it could mean, or what it actually did mean. I wasn't that clueless, but I didn't have time for her tears and worries right now. I didn't have any time to waste at all.
What people don't get is that makeup is many skills in one, and just because you're good at doing makeup for one goal doesn't mean that you were any good at doing them for others. I could and did put together some 'no makeup' makeup half-asleep, and I could put together the kind of makeup you might wear to go to a nice, but not super-rich, restaurant. I'd even learned how to do the kind of formal makeup you might use for some lame school event, though I hadn't gone to any at Winslow so far because I wasn't suicidal.
…well, I wasn't all that suicidal. People sometimes thought things about what the world would be like if they were just dead, because of course a part of you wanted to know if it was you that was wrong with the world. That was honestly just normal. Not that you didn't think you were innocent of any wrongdoing, but that you wanted to be sure beyond certainty and felt as if anything would be worth the price, even there not being anything to pay the price and know better…
But I wasn't going to any parties, that was the actual point before I distracted myself. So I didn't think I did a great job with the thick eyeshadow, the dark lipstick, which made my lips look almost bruised, and everything else. But I at least had a steady hand and didn't poke my eye out with a mascara wand, so I decided that was good enough. Plus, next time I did this I'd do even better. I even put in the earrings just because they were the kind I wouldn't have been caught dead with. I hadn't worn earrings at school, because they were handy gripping places, but I had plenty for when I was off school, just so that I could feel good about myself.
I looked strange, especially once I'd put my hair up into something a little more elaborate. I didn't think I looked good, but I did think that even the slightly clumsy makeup and the 'trying too hard' of the entire outfit would help me stand out. Taylor From Winslow did not try too hard, sometimes it felt like 'she' didn't try at all, just sank down into the nothing she really was deep down.
I almost thought of it as a different person, and I was reminded of that again as I looked at myself in the mirror. The glasses stood out in comparison to the rest of the outfit, but of course I'd be wearing the goggles and gas mask over it. I'd have to make sure it didn't impact my ability to see, because I really would need all the vision I could get in a nightclub.
I grabbed the gas mask and everything and stepped out. Isa looked me up and down and said, "Yeah, I don't buy that that's Taylor Hebert, so I think it works. It… it also looks really good, Taylor." She was fidgeting a little bit, no doubt seeing some ruffled bit of my clothing that could be improved, among whatever else she was thinking about me and what I was doing. "Do you… want to bring the laser gun?"
"No, if I took the pistol, someone would figure out that I was a cape, and it's far more likely they think I'm trying to attack than anything else. It's how fear works," I said. "And once they're scared, it's hard to come back from it. Fear's a poison, and real poisons, even when you recover they leave damage behind."
Isa was nodding, though if anything she seemed… more nervous of me? I really was going to have to do something about it.
…but I was sure the problem'd keep.
I put the mask on, and I felt the distance between me and the world. It no doubt looked silly, some early-2000s trend combined with all of the mall bravado. Perfectly unique, just like the other dozen goths at school.
I'd make it work. Melinoe would not be seen as anything but either strange or pretentious before I made it mean something.
I could do that.
More than could, I had to do that.
It was only just barely starting to get dark by the time I reached my destination. I'd taken a UnCab, and made sure not to say much of anything. UnCabs, which were basically those ride-sharing services but this local, unionized version that cost way more than the alternative but had something of a monopoly, was part of the Alliance. That didn't mean they didn't pick up people who weren't Alliance members, but I knew that sometimes they passed on gossip and so on about the kinds of people who ordered a cab.
I also knew a lot of things that would not even remotely matter about the club. It had started as the Cotton Rose, a Black and Tan back in the 1920s and 1930s with elements of speakeasy. When that had fallen out of favor it had become the Rose Lounge in the 1950s, offering classy entertainment and 'cleaning up' its reputation as a seedy spot full of sex, drugs, and racial mixing. But of course that didn't last, and in the 1970s it became a Discotheque, and in the 1980s it briefly took on a Parahuman theme before being run out of business by the gangs of the time, among other things. Then it was purchased in the 1990s during the strange Western Revival that I'd only vaguely heard about, though by the early 2000s this was just window dressing.
The Ranch was a place where drugs were sold, where sex workers that hadn't been snatched up by the ABB, convinced to operate a certain way by the Alliance, or… shifted by the E88 often gathered. There were many places, but I knew that this was one of them. And there were still plenty of people who went here even though it was run down, because apparently the drinks were cheap and the standards for entry low.
The front facade included a pair of saloon doors, even if there were the real sliding doors behind them, to be closed when it closed down. The front also included a facade of windows with flowers in them, but the windows peaked into arranged scenes of debauchery, as if this was an Old West brothel.
That's where most of the actual work was, I'd looked at pictures of the inside and it was just a club with some 'old west' stuff on the walls, a riding bull off to a corner, and a drink menu that included the phrase 'Pardner Pineapple Punch.' In front of the saloon doors was a tall, dark-skinned man in a cowboy hat. He was the outside bouncer, I was pretty sure, and he was glancing down at his phone every so often as he let people through one by one. There wasn't a huge line, really, but there was a small cluster, five or six friends going through as I stepped closer.
He was looking at the phone, and then at his ring. Worried about his wife? Afraid of something, no, stupid Taylor, he'd be afraid for her. That's what it looked like. Had something happened to her? Or him, it could be him, now that I thought about it. There was no way that just a close look at someone could tell you that. I watched him for the minute it took to get to the front of the barely existing line.
When I reached him, he didn't comment. If he thought I was just fifteen he should have stopped me or tried to force me to get a stamp to make sure I didn't drink and everyone knew or… something. But he didn't seem to care. "Cover charge is $10," he said.
I paid, glancing back at him once more. He hadn't even thought it odd that I had a mask on.
The inside of the club was… something.
The music playing was some kind of club beat, I honestly forgot it almost as soon as I heard it because I was looking around at the half-empty club. People met vampires in places like this and were never seen again. In stories, that is. The dance floor was anemic now, but slowly starting to get more lively. If I was looking to be a cop there were plenty of drug busts I could have done at that moment, because every booth seemed to have either a… couple or someone making absolutely sure that the table wasn't visible at a certain angle.
And then, standing off towards a corner, was my target.
Grue was dressed in motorcycle leathers, a tall and powerfully-built figure that had inches on me, and also a lot of weight in muscle mass. He was really, really imposing, and as checked out as the bouncer outside. He had his own worries, and I had to imagine that they were his sister. This crowd didn't have any live wires, anyone who would be more than a marginal threat at best.
So he was going to focus on the worries that really kept him up at night. He was someone who'd done plenty of violence in his day, and would do plenty of more violence before his day was done, which could be a while. He looked older, but I suspected he wasn't nearly as old as one might guess just looking at a tall, bulky figure like that.
I took a deep breath and began stalking towards him, in the best way I knew. You didn't approach someone too close, instead I tried to focus on going the long way around, slowly circling towards him. With Parahumans, you couldn't just look at them and know whether or not they were dangerous. Often enough people used that as an excuse to shoot anyone that got in their way. But I was certainly more dangerous than I looked, so if I walked up to him… maybe he'd panic.
Still, eventually he noticed I was getting closer, and he looked me over.
The gas mask hadn't actually drawn that much attention, there were several people who also wore things that covered their faces. But he was looking at me, and even through the skull-shaped helmet he had on. He was staring right through me, and all of a sudden (unsurprisingly) I had to fight back the nerves that told me that this was going to end badly. They whispered it, they cried it out, as if I hadn't had those thoughts about every single thing I'd ever done.
I was intimidated, to say the least. I was personifying my own doubts, even.
"What is it?" he asked, once he was clear I really was approaching.
"H-hello, I'm Melinoe, I'd like to talk to you," I began.
"Melinoe," the voice growled, sounding more thoughtful than anything else. "Cape?"
Of course that was the only reason, or one of the only two possible reasons, that someone would approach him while he was working. The other, of course, was flirtation.
"Yes," I said, trying not to fidget. "I don't want to talk to you here, but I'm willing to… you have a good reputation, I'd trust you if you named a place for us to meet… after this." I was stumbling, I knew, but I also knew that as dangerous as this was, I needed to give Grue the power. He was afraid that I was dangerous, he no doubt worried that I had some sort of power that could harm him.
"Power?"
"Complicated," I admitted. "I'm pretty new, but… I have something on offer that…"
"Not interested," he said, and I could tell that he'd decided I wasn't safe, and so he wouldn't hear me out.
I fidgeted and said, "I can give people nightmares."
Grue stopped there, looking at me as if seeing me for the first time.
"Nightmares?"
"...not going to do it to you to prove it," I said. "But would that be something someone would lie about?"
I realized as soon as I said it that someone would do that. It was the kind of power that a poser goth would say she had.
He didn't say it, but he looked at me with that posture that said he was considering what to do if I didn't back up.
"Look, I have a burner phone number I can give you, I think," I said. "Just, it's actually important but I can't really spill it here where someone can overhear. It'd not be good for either of us." I didn't want to hint any more than that, because the more I brought up his sister even indirectly in public, the more he'd fear me and the less he'd trust me. But I needed to get him on board or this was going to be a lot harder than it had to be.
He was a powerful Parahuman, and even more than that an experienced one. I'd just have to…
His cell-phone started ringing at the same time that a few others throughout the club tensed. There were a few seconds of movement before someone realized what it had to mean and cried out, ""Police incoming!" Then others began to move, some of them towards the bathrooms, some towards the back, and others looking like they were going to try to stampede out the front entrance. That single cry threw the whole party into disarray. I barely had time to react as Grue stepped forward. His contract no doubt said he had to fight every gang in Brockton Bay, and that included the police, even if some would argue they were tied closely enough to the E88 as to not really be separate at all.
I moved to step closer to him.
"I can help," I said, quietly, as we both moved to be out of the way in case the police came in guns blazing and firing at the first thing they saw. They really could do that, and we both knew that.
"I can handle this," he growled out, as he found a table to half-duck behind.
It was a half a minute of panicking and prep before the door burst open. The bouncer must have slowed them down one moment. A dozen policemen burst in, armed with rifles. "Freeze!" one of them yelled. "Get down on the ground! Now! Do it or we start defending ourselves!"
Grue raised a hand and the darkness began to envelop the dozen cops. His power was cool to watch, and absolutely the right thing to do against someone like that. A few of the cops started firing wildly as I ducked behind a table myself. I couldn't see them, so I couldn't use my powers on them. Nor could I afford to hurry forward when they were firing at random and running to try and fail to escape the darkness, which began to spread to cover them.
I looked around and had an idea. I sprinted towards a little closet, hoping that the cops were too busy, and wheeled out- yeah. Ew.
In this tiny little closet was a smelly bucket of water that had clearly been thoroughly used for cleaning and then not dumped out. I grabbed it, hefting it, and hurried along, trying to keep low and not spill too much. Even so, I was ruining my clothes, I knew, as I tossed the water out onto the tile floor where the darkness was spreading.
By that point one of the police had moved forward… and then slipped on the water and fell on his face with a groan, gun going off once more.
I hadn't thought about how loud it would be, but it was very, very loud. It was the kind of sound that was easy to mistake, but… I'd heard it before. I'd heard it plenty of times, but never like this.
Now when a gun was going off, I could be hit by it. I could die, and it wouldn't even take much to kill me. But I'd made one slip and now that he was looking I pressed the fears into his head. I didn't have time to think about what would be best, but he seemed like the kind of guy who was afraid of something silly, like spiders. (Insects were sorta gross, but spiders weren't insects. I remember I'd been told that once as part of some weird… I can't remember. It was about an Earth Bet Superhero and why I should check him out even though he was (I'd said) an insect and thus gross!)
So he started screaming and clawing at his body as spiders crawled from his eyes and flesh. Or was it about drugs? I wasn't quite sure what I was doing, except swaying slightly as I got under cover.
All this time, people were backing out and escaping, because Grue was doing a good job dragging this out.
"Zulu! Zulu! We have two Zulus," a man screamed holding his radio as he stumbled out of the darkness. "Or a Zulu and a, fuck, I can't remember the code…"
He went down, and for almost a minute, that's what happened. I hid, the cops were picked off one by one, screaming, my powers helping and Grue tackling one that got too close and beating him up while I watched in shock. Then, something changed.
There was a moment of confusion and then there was a sound. It wasn't a siren, instead it was like a scream, and from the darkness walked a most unnerving figure.
A figure I knew. He had on a gray set of robes, a gas mask like I did but old, vintage WW2 style, and a hood on. Fog strolled up and said, "I believe the word for the Frauline would be a 'Desdemona?'" He spoke the words with this thick German accent and a great deal of contempt. A few of the cops were hissing at him, hating to be relieved.
Meanwhile, I was trying to figure it out. Did they think I was just some girl hanging out with… oh.
Fog turned to face both of us, and I thought I knew what else was in Grue's darkness. Somewhere in there was Night, unseen and ready to strike unexpectedly. Perhaps move from an angle nobody was looking from, seeing as two-thirds of the club had already fled, if not more.
Night and Fog, the killer couple of the E88, the psychotic monsters, product of the twisted experiments of the Gesellschaft. Soldiers of the Fourth Reich. Over a hundred dead between them. Those are just the ones confirmed.
…I was in over my head.
bookwyrm
Doom of Public Libraries
- Location
- Wichita, Kansas
Huh I guess "super-powered literal German Nazi in a WW2 Nazi-based costume and a serial killer body count" is still, as of yet, an unexpected obstacle sandbagging the BBPD and ruining their day, genuinely more anti-Nazi than I gave them credit for (though even then, this is unlikely to be the same dynamic for more savory parts of the E88 like Purity or whatever).
Though maybe I shouldn't be so surprised, the police as a gang probably have just as many ties to the Maquis organization moonlighting as Boardwalk mercs and street enforcers and public security for mobbed up components of his empire, and would hate the E88 fuckers in the department just for being competition if nothing else, and perhaps for occasionally setting up other cops to get whacked not for being whistleblowing rats or for being stuck-up wildcards who refused to get on the take, but just for being anything other than white.
Though maybe I shouldn't be so surprised, the police as a gang probably have just as many ties to the Maquis organization moonlighting as Boardwalk mercs and street enforcers and public security for mobbed up components of his empire, and would hate the E88 fuckers in the department just for being competition if nothing else, and perhaps for occasionally setting up other cops to get whacked not for being whistleblowing rats or for being stuck-up wildcards who refused to get on the take, but just for being anything other than white.
- Pronouns
- They/Them
I mean, to be clear, they did call in the Neo-Nazis?
Like, they specifically called for backup from the Nazis, though not everyone is happy about it.
But that's what "Zulu" was about.
bookwyrm
Doom of Public Libraries
- Location
- Wichita, Kansas
ooohh, I completely misread that lol
any forms of theorizing on some level of respectability from the cops happily withdrawn