146 - Treble Dread
GraftingBuddha
Retired Pooh-Bah
146 - Treble Dread
The night was a long one. Rain was starting to come - a summer storm, the kind that the air saves itself up for like a great, formless lung full of bile and rot and vulgar words. When the ice in the sky is no more and the mountains come down to earth, the clouds sagging and heaving under their own weight as nature turns against them. For a night, mountains of cloud descended on Brockton Bay, grey masses that rolled past like titanic hills, like barrows, like the mounds which had once surrounded Mound Moor, before the entire place was wiped off the map. And Taylor and Ahab lingered. The two of them were hungry, desperate, and both of them completely and utterly mad. The sky was black and grey, like a mongrel cat. With its silvery moon of an eye it glared down at the two revellers. When matters became intolerable for sensible thought, when being sensible just brought dark ponderings and miserable recollections, they elected to become idiots. When even the idiots could find cause for sadness, they elected to become beasts instead. And as beasts, they knew nothing of the times to come. All they knew was that they had a purpose, a cause on which to burn themselves brighter than anyone could know. They had something to do with their lives, and in Ahab's case, there was no reason to hold back for a second. Maybe they shouldn't be drinking. Maybe they shouldn't have given into the temptation.
But here they were.
The two beasts roared at one another as they downed another drink, throats thoroughly abused by too much shouting and too many liquid explosions racing down to their stomachs. Moonshine exclusively. They liked the stuff, and it liked them - as much as moonshine can be said to love at all. But in its watery heart it found some capacity, and thus the two found company. The night was split with their cries, and the cries of an assortment of odd things which wandered the cloud-choked streets. Shaggy grey dogs with wide dark eyes howled at the near-invisible moon, and termites scuttled through the sewers towards uncertain destinations. Seagulls squealed loudly in the night, laughing at one another in high, piercing voices as they swooped to pluck dead fish from the waterline. One such bird flew inland rather a ways, landing on the windowsill outside Taylor's room. It saw the warm light, heard the noises, and for a second connected them to the sensation of gorging itself on the refuse left by merrymakers on the Boardwalk during the hottest of days. A tap at the window… no way in. Another tap, and a spider landed on the top edge of its beak, looking angrily at the great airborne rat with a beady assortment of eyes. A squeal of indignation and fright was the result, and a renewed burst of laughter from inside. Ahab was more of a mess than usual, her hair was a dishevelled rat's nest, and her sores were openly weeping. She downed another drink, and hollered at Taylor.
"And that is how you get a man, girl, that is how you accomplish it!"
Oh h-h-heavens, your head is swimming and I'm caught inside it, oh dear…
Taylor blinked blearily, as she sagged against a wall. They were inside her room, drinking themselves stupid, surrounded by smiling Soviet-era models that she still couldn't figure out how to get down from the wall. She tried to stand up, but her legs were starting to consider the possibility of continuing on as a solo act, divorced from one another and from her torso. As a consequence, she simply fell to the carpet and sprawled messily while Ahab cackled.
"Kid, you're slammed right now."
"...n-no, my legs are just… just getting rebellious ideas, is all."
"Burn their places of worship, that'll show them! Worked in Kyrgyzstan, it'll work here!"
Taylor staggered back to her feet, leaning heavily against a wall.
"...I'd take you up on… on that, but I don't know where to find them."
"Your legs?"
"Their… places of worship, or whatever. Can't find it. And I don't think that… experiments with fire are wise when we're this… this… shit, I'm drunk…"
Ahab lunged, and knocked on Taylor's head a few times while the girl tried ineffectually to thrash her away.
"Chorei! Oy, Chorei, where do legs go to worship?"
How sh… oh, Taylor, usurper, Taylor, give me your powers.
Taylor barely thought about it before accepting. Her swarm abruptly shifted hands, and the nun started to try and form herself a body. It was rudimentary at first… and at last. There was a hope of arms and legs. A hope that was dashed in seconds, and Chorei simply contented herself with becoming a faintly irregular ball of chittering legs and pincers, projecting her voice outwards in a messy cacophony.
"I don't know where legs go to worship, you… rotten creature, I have no notion of where legs go to worship."
"Oh shit the nun has a body again."
Ahab blinked a few times, then giggled slightly.
"Heh, you're a ball."
"And you're half-dead."
Taylor froze. Ahab glared. And then she burst out laughing, showing off all her chipped yellow teeth and the rusted hunks that passed for the metal ones she'd picked up along the course of her deeply violent life.
"And you're full dead! So there!"
"By your hand. By your axe was I almost decapitated, a slight I have yet to forgive."
"And you broke my arm, but as a pinnacle of sublime forgiveness I shall forgive ye. Now… fuck off, you giant bug ball. Or tell me where legs go to worship so I can burn it down with my friend here."
"I don't know where! Legs don't worship!"
"Mountains can be gods, can't they?"
"Well-"
"Why not legs."
"You facetious little-"
Taylor cut them both off with waved hands and half-spoken words, while she reasserted a little control over her power, confining Chorei to her ball. She could feel a small urge towards biting Ahab a few times building within the nun, and wanted to take swift, decisive action against it. The two bickered onwards, and Taylor sat down once more, sagging into the couch while a strange feeling washed over her. Ahab was just… talking. Smiling. Happy. Her stump was nothing, her illness was nothing, all that remained was getting drunk with a friend. And she'd called her a friend, too. Nothing unspoken or implied, just an explicit declaration - 'Taylor Hebert is my friend'. And Ahab was hers. The alcohol had helped wash away a great deal of strangeness and tension from the evening. But not all. Reality lingered in the room like an uncontrollable mosquito. Tiny. Irrelevant. And then it'd buzz past her ear and suddenly she'd snap back to its existence, to the world it represented. To the world where Ahab was dying and Taylor was willing to help her do something with her life before it ended.
Because if the positions were reversed, she knew she'd be begging Ahab to do the same. Because there was no fate more miserable, in her eyes, than rotting away doing nothing of consequence for the rest of her days. And then again… well, her life felt like a small bright window where things happened, surrounded by an interminable doubtful void, like the swirling landscape of clouds outside the window. Before a certain point, there was just… nothing. Days wasted on pleasant nothings, punctuated by a small scattering of great events. And after a certain point in her future… predictions failed. Just boundless gloom. All that existed was here and now, the duties she had to perform, the things she longed to accomplish, the tasks that simply had to be done before that gloom descended - a gloom so thick and dark it may as well be death. Dark thoughts - no time for dark thoughts. Chorei and Ahab paused when Taylor raised herself up once more, staggering over to join them.
"...you're looking serious, kid."
Chorei made a strange gurgling noise from the depths of her bug-ball - took a while to figure out that that equated to a derisive snort.
"She always looks like that. Trust me, I know. I see it every time she looks in a mirror."
"...how do you cope with having this woman in your head constantly?"
"Patiently."
"Fair. But still. What's up?"
"Just wanted to…"
She paused. What did she want to do? Say 'thanks' for the times they'd had, say 'sorry' for the times they hadn't had? Something else entirely? They'd already hugged, and she wasn't a very huggy person, nor was Ahab. The silence was becoming drawn-out. Needed to do something, or this entire exercise was pointless. Chorei was bumbling around, bumping into walls, absorbing small objects to examine before shunting them outwards with a sound like a rock being ejected from quicksand. Her words were dying on her lips. All that remained was a looming ambiguity, a feeling that something should be said, but no idea what that something should be. Taylor held up a single finger, and went for the container of termites. Still two of them, still wriggling with all the energy they had possessed in the meat packing plant. She studied them closely, and they studied her.
"Chorei? You think they're…"
"...hm. You think they're affecting us still?"
"I'm saying it could be possible."
Ahab leant in, examining the insects with a faint sense of revulsion.
"What are they, exactly?"
"Termites. They feed on ambiguity. Associated with the image of a five-horned bull."
"...shit, that's nuts."
"Indeed."
"Indeed."
"So, how do you go about killing them?"
"Squash them, mostly. But I get the feeling that won't be totally sustainable."
"...flamethrower?"
"Turk's looking into it."
"Oh, right, I remember that. Sorry, very drunk right now."
Taylor clapped her heavily on the shoulder.
"It's quite all right, just between the two of us, I'm also very drunk."
Chorei buzzed irritably.
"I am involuntarily drunk. I don't know how to feel about it. I didn't get drunk very often in my life."
Ahab glanced idly over at the nun-bug-ball.
"Oh, right, yeah, you had a life before becoming a centipede nun. Say, small question - did you ever get… you know… laid back in the day?"
"I most certainly did not. I was young, then I was busy training, and then…"
Ahab cackled loudly.
"Oh, that's great. No offence, I'm not trying to mock you or anything, credit to you for becoming immortal… mostly, but seriously, what was the point of immortality if you never had fun with it?"
"My business was more important than interpersonal relationships."
Taylor grimaced. That was hitting a little too close to home. Chorei twittered around, doing nothing of any consequence, mostly just relishing in the feeling of having control over something again. Understandable. Ahab sagged into a chair, and gave Chorei a look. It was odd, the two of them conversing like this… but it was probably good for Chorei to talk to someone else. She had far more reservations with others. With Taylor she could be downright absurd at times, obsessing over tiny details, relishing in miniscule things. Here… she was painfully formal, occasionally polite, even when alcohol was coursing through the brain she lived in.
"Mind if I ask you something?"
"I have little ability to stop you. Go on."
"I've read your book."
"Thief."
"Virgin. Anyway. I read your book. And you're serious in it, like, really serious. Lots of long words and everything, lots of rambling about 'ooh the grafting buddha oooh the mysteries of grafting oooh I'm so mysterious and arcane and occult and super duper serious'. You were like that when I first met you, and right at the end too. Serious, serious, serious, and completely fucking sociopathic. And now you're just… hanging around in a ball. And Taylor can tolerate you. You're even answering my questions about your old life, revealing deeply, deeply embarrassing things, like the fact that you lived your entire life without once getting… well."
She laughed slightly, and Taylor couldn't help but smile.
"So, what changed?"
"I died. You were there."
"...oh yeah."
"Life changes when you die."
Ahab snickered.
"Silence. Everything seems smaller and larger than it once was. The tiny things I never attended to loomed higher than mountains. And the things I once considered paramount aspects of myself seemed… petty. All my years of devotion were nothing in the face of death. I had not become enlightened. I would be returned to the cycle of rebirth, if I was lucky. If I was not, my mind would be consumed by an enemy I thought I had long-since escaped. So the years of labour had been fruitless, time where I could have indulged myself a little more. In the end, all those years of fasting felt like… so much dust on my tongue. In that final moment before the closure, every act of fasting and abstinence I once took pride in felt like nothing at all. When darkness came, I didn't dream of all the bowls of plain, unseasoned rice I had eaten, I thought of the strange smells coming from shops that I had never investigated, the luxuries I had never sampled, the experiences I had never had."
She paused, mulling over her own words.
"I have said too much. But I cannot expect you to understand."
Taylor hummed lightly, curious. Certainly explained the obsession with smaller things. If a near-death experience could inspire a great hunger for anything greasy and unhealthy, an actual death probably worked up an appetite that could never be met. Explained why she was so eager to go to every restaurant she could, to indulge in every food that seemed remotely interesting, to experience life in a way she hadn't before. Wait - a memory was coming to mind. Something Chorei would definitely have never wanted to show her, not deliberately at least. But it had come to mind nonetheless, and had been important to the nun before her death. Important enough that it had lingered in her mind when her life raced before her eyes. A knight who'd journeyed to Senpou Temple, part of an order which had uncovered the Grafting Buddha in their own way, and had sought to learn the truth of his condition. Why had he come to mind? Why had she remembered him so keenly? She murmured idly, but Chorei heard it clearly.
"Sigismund…"
"Why did you say that name."
Her voice was small. A little hurt.
"You… showed me him. Ages ago. Back when you were still incomplete."
"Why did you say his name?"
"Just… I was just thinking. It was nothing. Just an accident."
Ahab leaned forward, her voice dropping and becoming more… serious, in a way.
"Who was he?"
"...a knight I once knew. From a land he called Francia. He came to Senpou and we… became friends, of a sort."
"Tell me about him. Interested in hearing what your friends are like."
"He wore the image of a tortured man around his neck. He regarded our doctrines with a mix of interest and derision. He was loud. Always loud. Bathed infrequently."
She paused.
"I enjoyed his laugh. I enjoyed it a great deal."
"Go on, say more."
"I'd rather not."
"Come on, no-one's overly interested in this ugly mug. They say it's what inside that counts, well, I'm full of pus and rotting organs. So… yeah. Come on, let me live vicariously. Like you do with Taylor."
Chorei was hesitant, not accustomed to speaking of this. But drunkenness was relaxing her inhibitions in the presence of a stranger.
"...I cannot remember the year. But it was when the sakura blossoms were beginning to fall, in the midst of spring. We grew a small number, and… I walked beneath them. I found him there. I had known him for a little while, enough to greet one another casually, but we were not quite friends. He was letting the petals fall all around him, tangling in his hair and moustache. I watched him for a time, let him enjoy the sun while it lasted. But… he looked sorrowful. He missed his home, I believe. So I fetched a little sake from my rooms - a small amount that I kept for myself, though I rarely drank. Better to have the choice and refuse than to be choiceless and always wonder."
"Hear hear to that."
"Regardless. I brought him a little - I knew that he was a heavy drinker in his own country, and I thought he may feel more at home. He had some, I had some… and I made some idle comment. A joke. The first I had made in his presence, I can barely remember the details of it. Sigismund was still for a second, and I thought I had insulted him… then he sprang to his feet, picked me up by my waist and swung me around, laughing happily. He said it was the first proper joke he'd heard since his arrival."
A small but heavy pause.
"I was frozen in the moment, but… I cannot help but remember the feeling of his arms around me. Of his laugh. Of being spun around while blossoms rained down all around. For days afterwards I… would feel a sensation on my skin, a remembrance of where he had held me. Silly sentimentality."
She fell silent, but her last words were flavoured with a deep, abiding sadness. Taylor tried to project some manner of comfort to her, while shooting a warning look at Ahab. She knew how the story ended. And it wasn't something she imagined Chorei would want to discuss. Ahab quietly raised a glass.
"I'll drink to that. Funny to think that… you know, I shot you. And almost chopped your head off. Because you're actually fairly alright - I mean, the murdering and infesting part is a bit rank, but hey, who hasn't done a bit of murder and infestation? I know I've done the former, latter… eh, by a given definition, maybe. Taylor?"
"Both."
"Heh. So, yeah, funny, don't you think?"
"Funny. That is a word."
"...not sorry for doing any of that. But I'm sorry I had to do it."
Chorei hummed disconsolately.
"Alright, come on. Drink! And I'll tell stories about some of the other men I've trapped, and-"
She grabbed at the termite box.
"-show these damn things what they're missing out on, eh?"
Taylor was about to nod… when something bizarre caught her eye. The termites were moving strangely. Still scuttling, still writhing, but for once, their energy seemed to have been drained away. They shuffled listlessly from one side of the container to the other, their whispers were even quieter and less frequent… they looked half-dead. Being taken out of the plant hadn't done a thing, being locked up for hours hadn't made a dent in them, but apparently Ahab handling their box was enough to make them start to act like… well, like insects trapped inside tupperware for most of a day. Taylor leant forwards, examining them closely. Ahab froze, sensing that the mood had abruptly changed… and that scheming was commencing. Taylor poked lightly at the side, and the termites… rolled over, accepting the force instead of resisting it. Was it a ruse to make them let their guards down? Was it just a coincidence?
"Hand me the box."
And the moment Ahab did, the creatures seemed to become more lively. Just a little. Back to Ahab - and the energy drained away as quickly as it had come. Her thoughts were moving quickly - implications, ways of accounting for this. Ahab blinked confusedly as Taylor plotted things out… and when she spoke, the room listened, enraptured.
"...so these things feed on ambiguity."
"That's what you said, yeah."
"Chorei, you remember what happened in the plant when you appeared?"
"They swarmed in my direction. Just as they swarmed in the direction of that blonde menace."
"Yeah, yeah, because they were feeding on… well, ambiguities. And I guess you're pretty… ambiguous, I guess."
"It is conceivable. Death and rebirth… they have opened many doors for me that I otherwise thought closed off by my duties."
"And Ahab, you're…"
She trailed off, trying to put it into words.
"...unambiguous."
Emphasis on 'trying'. Ahab blinked.
"...uh-huh."
"No, think about it. I mean, I've got…"
The sentence died once more. They were getting into deeply uncomfortable territory here. Ahab hummed thoughtfully, and, bless her, decided to complete the thought herself. No discomfort on her part. Some people had all the luck. And those people weren't Ahab, but she still had a certain amount of luck skimmed from the great cauldron of life.
"You've got a whole life ahead of you. Chorei, too. And you've got things to resolve. I don't."
She smiled crookedly.
"Ain't that a shitshow? I'm all done. Over the hill. Termites confirm it and everything. I think there's a bunch of guys in Central Africa who use termites as oracles, apparently they're right. Heh. Should blow a few minds."
Taylor gripped her around the shoulders.
"No, seriously, think about it - they like ambiguities, and you're not ambiguous in the slightest. I mean, are there any… unresolved things that you could go and address?"
"Nope. Family's dead or gone, cut those bridges a long time ago. I'm dying, so… yeah. And all my 'rivals' are dead. Most of my friends, too. Except for you lovable scamps, of course."
Taylor stared at the struggling termites with a feeling of genuine victory. She'd found a weakness. A real, true weakness. The kind that could make this entire operation so much easier it was almost funny. Ideas were spiralling, faster and faster. Everything needed to happen all at once - she had a chance to act, a massive invitation showing her where to go, of course she was going to exploit it. Honestly, she'd been dreading the idea of just sitting around on stakeouts while her research continued. This was excellent. Direct. Unambiguous. Perfect. A real call to arms, a wide door leading to victory. Something nice and bright to burn herself on, Ahab too. If unambiguity could hurt them, starve these things to the point of weakness… oh, she had ideas, she did. Ahab could see a hint of her scheming, and leaned in closer, sagging into Taylor slightly. She weighed less than she once did.
"Come on, no scheming, want to get drunk."
Taylor mumbled into her shoulder.
"You're not already drunk?"
"I'm barely tipsy, come on, want to get more alcohol into me, just…"
She paused.
"...I'll just stay here for a moment, then I'll get some more."
A strange, mournful music began to play from outside their window. It had been going on for some time, but only now did it seem to break through the shifting landscape of clouds. It was a bizarre thing. Warbling and full of words none of them could understand. For a second Taylor imagined that it was some other force come to fuck with them, something unrelated to the termites, the flame, anything she'd yet experienced. The Song Unceasing or something suitably pretentious. Maybe it was - her swarm could find nothing, no speakers, no-one walking around with music blasting from a boombox slung over their shoulder, and certainly no singers. Yet the sound carried nonetheless, muffled very slightly by the mountains of cloud which billowed around them. They were in a tiny concrete island immersed in a sea of fog, only this odd song wafting through the windows to remind them of an outside world. An inverted siren. A sound like the shimmering of water along the edge of a glass labyrinth, a feeling like the clinging of dew to the side of a desiccated lily. It was impossible to describe, this song. The lyrics were inaudible, and all that remained was a faint feeling of aching nostalgia for something that had never existed. Her swarm was lazy in the fog, and perhaps she had missed something, or someone… maybe this was something else that had come to feed on the aftermath of Bisha's little reign of terror. Maybe this fog was the same.
Maybe it was nothing at all.
Or maybe it was everything.
But whatever it was, it was too distant to trace, and she was too drunk to care.
Ahab leaned closer into Taylor, and the two swayed for a moment - first out of drunkenness, and then Ahab committed. Was this dancing? Was this something people did when they danced? When had been the last time she'd danced at all? As memories went, it was… too distant to be fully resolved. Just a vague hint that once upon a time she'd tried this, taken firmly against it, and had elected to not do it in future. Now? She was trapped, and that would have to be an adequate excuse. The two swayed back and forth, and Chorei buzzed around blearily, unsure of what to do or what to think. But she could fell everything Taylor felt. And after that story about Sigismund… well.
Seemed like the three of them were doing just fine.
But ideas refused to cease, not fully. She had to do something - the impulse came suddenly and ferociously, a burning thing that drove her outwards from Ahab's hold. Drunkenness forgotten, she lunged for the phone. Ahab leant back against the wall and watched the show while Taylor scrabbled for the right number, the phone being so old that it couldn't even store contacts. Chorei buzzed uneasily, and the ringing gradually resolved into a sleepy voice.
"Hey? You're awake?"
A pause.
"...yeah, I guess that's fair. Can you come over?"
More silence, and Ahab and Chorei exchanged glances, shrugging in their own biology-specific ways. Ahab used a single shoulder, and Chorei just jittered agitatedly.
"...uh-huh. No, I'm not drunk."
Ahab raised her eyebrows. Chorei mimicked the motion using a pile of woodlice.
"...I'm a little bit drunk, but this is important. We've got a pretty big lead on the termite situation, and-"
The phone clicked, and Taylor blinked.
"She hung up."
"Who?"
"Sanagi. She just hung up."
"Oh."
Ahab nodded sagely.
"She's coming here at top speed as we speak. No doubt about it."
"Really?"
"Dunno, probably. Or someone just murdered her. Or she forgot to pay her phone bill."
A pause.
"...hey, give me the phone, I want to ask her to pick up an arm."
"I doubt she'll get one."
"...hey, so it takes… a while to get from Sanagi's place to here, so…"
"What are you thinking."
"There's a morgue, like, barely any distance away."
"No."
"Oh, come on, it'll be a quick thing, we just run in, grab an arm, be about, you attach it…"
"I don't know how to do it, I'll need time, and…"
"I could probably manage it."
Taylor sighed deeply.
"Chorei, please don't encourage-"
"See, the immortal nun agrees with me, and I helped kill her - if she's agreeing with me, that means a hell of a lot, huh?"
"The point remains that-"
"Arm. Heist. Arm. Heist. Arm. Heist."
She started pounding her fists on the coffee table as she spoke.
"It would be ludicrously risky to go and-"
"Arm. Heist. Arm. Heist. Arm. Heist!"
"I must concur with Taylor, the notion of robbing graves fills me with unease, and-"
"Arm! Heist! Arm! Heist! Arm! Heist!"
"Stop saying arm heist, we're not doing an arm heist, it's a bad idea on… on every level! There is no scenario where I'll be drunk enough to pull an… an arm heist. And that's something - you're too drunk for any kind of heist."
She caught her breath.
"...so there."
Ahab whistled.
"Alright, alright, don't have a stroke about it. No arm heist."
"Good."
She tilted her head to one side.
"...actually, how were you thinking of getting an arm?"
"Well-"
"And if you say 'arm heist', I will find you an arm and slap you with it."
"...no, I was going to buy it. Like a civilised person. Unlike you, apparently - hitting someone with a severed arm, that's just weird."
"I must agree with the leper, that was a truly barbaric threat."
"See, the immortal nun agrees with me."
"The immortal nun also had a centipede instead of a spine and tried to kill all of us."
"Oh shut up."
"Yes, shut up. The centipede was indescribable, the avenues it afforded were limitless. I would ask that you do not insult my last partner."
Huh. That was… a way of thinking about it. She'd never actually caught much of a glimpse of the centipede's personality through Chorei's memories, which was… weird, now she came to ponder it. And the fact that she could ponder it was concerning its own right. It meant the alcohol was processing through her system frighteningly quickly, and the great black wolf of sobriety was hunting her down with its jaws made from hangovers and sore throats, its growl the rumbling of an upset stomach. Too quick for her comfort. Either she was getting used to this, she had become too drunk to notice that she was drunk (entirely possible, she didn't drink enough to know its every in and out), or some nonsense was occurring as a consequence of having an immortal nun grafted to her mind, shining scars along her arms and most of her body, and whatever was going on with those termites.
"...you are being silent. I did not mean to cause offence."
"No, no, nothing, just… thinking, is all."
"Hm."
Ahab jumped in.
"Anything worth talking about?"
"...no, not much, just… lost in thought, that was all."
"Is this a termite thing again."
"Probably not. Might just be a me thing. Really, it's nothing."
"Huh. If you say so. So, wh-"
Taylor cut her off. She could sense something through her swarm. Someone approaching in a car, pulling up outside, exiting… ah. She knew that car, and she definitely knew the person riding inside it. A very, very sleepy cop exited her car and stumbled up to the door, ringing the bell with the air of someone who had reached out to press a button, fell briefly asleep, and woke up to find their finger upon the button with no notion of how it got there or how long it had been there. She rang, removed her finger, and rang again just to be sure. Taylor's swarm was already returning to her control, but she permitted Chorei her little speaker. The nun was clearly taking some enjoyment in being able to actually converse with people - if anything, she was much less insulting. Probably helped when there wasn't a constant intermediary to censor her more egregious statement, id est, 'rotten whore'. She fanned out through the area, checking every nook, every cranny, practically infesting every building in the immediate vicinity. No-one observing, nothing that could pose a threat. Double check. Triple check. Everything was fine - no capes to dive in and ruin her evening. The tea shop was cold, and oceans of cloud moved outside, heaving mountains which glided weightlessly down the street. Beyond, a certain cop waited, dressed in…
Huh.
Well, it'd been very short notice.
"Hey, Sanagi. Nice pyjamas."
"Shut up and let me in, I'm freezing."
Ahab poked her head into the shop.
"Hey, Skeletor, what's up?"
Sanagi looked like she was about to strangle someone, or blow them up with a laser. Taylor let her in, and instinctually clapped her on the shoulder. The moment she made contact, she froze. This wasn't something she usually did. Was… this because of the termites? Did she honestly just miss Sanagi this much? Or was she still very, very drunk? Sanagi was frozen as well. They didn't do this kind of thing. Neither of them knew how to react. Sanagi gave her a look, the kind that she presumably gave Astrid before biting her ear off.
"What are you doing."
Taylor was quite pale indeed.
"I don't know."
"This is very uncomfortable."
"I'm painfully aware."
"Please stop."
"Right, sure, I'll-"
"Ah, if it isn't the one who helped kill me, who investigated when all others had ceased, and, if I recall correctly, initiated the attack which destroyed my home and ruined my cult."
Sanagi's eyes widened.
"Is this why you called me? Because your shop is haunted, Taylor."
"No, that's just…"
The bug ball drifted into sight. Sanagi looked at it for a few seconds, then pinched the bridge of her nose and tried to get her temper back under control. If Taylor was to guess, she'd say that this entire situation represented something of a nadir for the cop. Taylor was still holding onto her shoulder (having forgotten, in her drunken haze, that letting go was probably a good idea). Ahab was swigging from a particularly large jug full of liquid technically only suited for burning warts off mules, and the bug ball was humming ominously with the voice of a woman she thought to be long-dead. And Taylor was only now realising that maybe calling her up was a bad move, born of excitement and alcohol. But she couldn't exactly go back on it. Just like she couldn't go back on grabbing her shoulder, a mistake she was continuing to perform as the seconds rolled by.
"How do you Americans say it - long time no see."
Sanagi pointedly ignored her.
"Why did you - please take your hand off my shoulder - call me?"
Taylor thought about her next response, in the processing missing the order to let go.
"Termites. We found something interesting about them today. Where they're from, who's spreading them… and something that might be able to put them down."
Her glass eyes somehow brightened a little, shimmering merrily in the pale moonlight, and Taylor swore she could hear small 'pops' around her skull as stars bloomed into existence and disappeared just as quickly.
"What do you know about that meat packing plant that was abandoned around the same time the power stations went down?"
Sanagi blinked, half-living eyelids sliding over never-alive eyes. She even ignored Taylor's continued grasp, as her mind clicked to new conclusions. A wicked grin began to spread across her face, possessed of a cold, hard cunning which even Ahab's chaotic cackles couldn't quite match in terms of sheer threat. The cop towered, capable of turning everything around her into a blasted heath, clad primarily in luminous pink pyjamas and a heavy pair of combat boots, hair somewhere between 'disorganised' and 'a war crime against good taste'.
"Oh. I know about that place."
The smile widened.
"Let's talk."
"Ah, most interest-"
"Shut up, nun."
As Chorei buzzed indignantly, Sanagi's smile softened slightly as she looked at Taylor. Hesitantly, she reached out and patted her on her own shoulder, the motion stiff and unpracticed.
"It's good to see you."
"...good to see you too."
"I'm downright ecstatic to see you, Sanagi, now, you want a drink? I'm getting a new arm, I'm fighting termites, I'm going to get shitfaced."
"Barbarian."
Sanagi sighed.
Business as usual, then.
The night was a long one. Rain was starting to come - a summer storm, the kind that the air saves itself up for like a great, formless lung full of bile and rot and vulgar words. When the ice in the sky is no more and the mountains come down to earth, the clouds sagging and heaving under their own weight as nature turns against them. For a night, mountains of cloud descended on Brockton Bay, grey masses that rolled past like titanic hills, like barrows, like the mounds which had once surrounded Mound Moor, before the entire place was wiped off the map. And Taylor and Ahab lingered. The two of them were hungry, desperate, and both of them completely and utterly mad. The sky was black and grey, like a mongrel cat. With its silvery moon of an eye it glared down at the two revellers. When matters became intolerable for sensible thought, when being sensible just brought dark ponderings and miserable recollections, they elected to become idiots. When even the idiots could find cause for sadness, they elected to become beasts instead. And as beasts, they knew nothing of the times to come. All they knew was that they had a purpose, a cause on which to burn themselves brighter than anyone could know. They had something to do with their lives, and in Ahab's case, there was no reason to hold back for a second. Maybe they shouldn't be drinking. Maybe they shouldn't have given into the temptation.
But here they were.
The two beasts roared at one another as they downed another drink, throats thoroughly abused by too much shouting and too many liquid explosions racing down to their stomachs. Moonshine exclusively. They liked the stuff, and it liked them - as much as moonshine can be said to love at all. But in its watery heart it found some capacity, and thus the two found company. The night was split with their cries, and the cries of an assortment of odd things which wandered the cloud-choked streets. Shaggy grey dogs with wide dark eyes howled at the near-invisible moon, and termites scuttled through the sewers towards uncertain destinations. Seagulls squealed loudly in the night, laughing at one another in high, piercing voices as they swooped to pluck dead fish from the waterline. One such bird flew inland rather a ways, landing on the windowsill outside Taylor's room. It saw the warm light, heard the noises, and for a second connected them to the sensation of gorging itself on the refuse left by merrymakers on the Boardwalk during the hottest of days. A tap at the window… no way in. Another tap, and a spider landed on the top edge of its beak, looking angrily at the great airborne rat with a beady assortment of eyes. A squeal of indignation and fright was the result, and a renewed burst of laughter from inside. Ahab was more of a mess than usual, her hair was a dishevelled rat's nest, and her sores were openly weeping. She downed another drink, and hollered at Taylor.
"And that is how you get a man, girl, that is how you accomplish it!"
Oh h-h-heavens, your head is swimming and I'm caught inside it, oh dear…
Taylor blinked blearily, as she sagged against a wall. They were inside her room, drinking themselves stupid, surrounded by smiling Soviet-era models that she still couldn't figure out how to get down from the wall. She tried to stand up, but her legs were starting to consider the possibility of continuing on as a solo act, divorced from one another and from her torso. As a consequence, she simply fell to the carpet and sprawled messily while Ahab cackled.
"Kid, you're slammed right now."
"...n-no, my legs are just… just getting rebellious ideas, is all."
"Burn their places of worship, that'll show them! Worked in Kyrgyzstan, it'll work here!"
Taylor staggered back to her feet, leaning heavily against a wall.
"...I'd take you up on… on that, but I don't know where to find them."
"Your legs?"
"Their… places of worship, or whatever. Can't find it. And I don't think that… experiments with fire are wise when we're this… this… shit, I'm drunk…"
Ahab lunged, and knocked on Taylor's head a few times while the girl tried ineffectually to thrash her away.
"Chorei! Oy, Chorei, where do legs go to worship?"
How sh… oh, Taylor, usurper, Taylor, give me your powers.
Taylor barely thought about it before accepting. Her swarm abruptly shifted hands, and the nun started to try and form herself a body. It was rudimentary at first… and at last. There was a hope of arms and legs. A hope that was dashed in seconds, and Chorei simply contented herself with becoming a faintly irregular ball of chittering legs and pincers, projecting her voice outwards in a messy cacophony.
"I don't know where legs go to worship, you… rotten creature, I have no notion of where legs go to worship."
"Oh shit the nun has a body again."
Ahab blinked a few times, then giggled slightly.
"Heh, you're a ball."
"And you're half-dead."
Taylor froze. Ahab glared. And then she burst out laughing, showing off all her chipped yellow teeth and the rusted hunks that passed for the metal ones she'd picked up along the course of her deeply violent life.
"And you're full dead! So there!"
"By your hand. By your axe was I almost decapitated, a slight I have yet to forgive."
"And you broke my arm, but as a pinnacle of sublime forgiveness I shall forgive ye. Now… fuck off, you giant bug ball. Or tell me where legs go to worship so I can burn it down with my friend here."
"I don't know where! Legs don't worship!"
"Mountains can be gods, can't they?"
"Well-"
"Why not legs."
"You facetious little-"
Taylor cut them both off with waved hands and half-spoken words, while she reasserted a little control over her power, confining Chorei to her ball. She could feel a small urge towards biting Ahab a few times building within the nun, and wanted to take swift, decisive action against it. The two bickered onwards, and Taylor sat down once more, sagging into the couch while a strange feeling washed over her. Ahab was just… talking. Smiling. Happy. Her stump was nothing, her illness was nothing, all that remained was getting drunk with a friend. And she'd called her a friend, too. Nothing unspoken or implied, just an explicit declaration - 'Taylor Hebert is my friend'. And Ahab was hers. The alcohol had helped wash away a great deal of strangeness and tension from the evening. But not all. Reality lingered in the room like an uncontrollable mosquito. Tiny. Irrelevant. And then it'd buzz past her ear and suddenly she'd snap back to its existence, to the world it represented. To the world where Ahab was dying and Taylor was willing to help her do something with her life before it ended.
Because if the positions were reversed, she knew she'd be begging Ahab to do the same. Because there was no fate more miserable, in her eyes, than rotting away doing nothing of consequence for the rest of her days. And then again… well, her life felt like a small bright window where things happened, surrounded by an interminable doubtful void, like the swirling landscape of clouds outside the window. Before a certain point, there was just… nothing. Days wasted on pleasant nothings, punctuated by a small scattering of great events. And after a certain point in her future… predictions failed. Just boundless gloom. All that existed was here and now, the duties she had to perform, the things she longed to accomplish, the tasks that simply had to be done before that gloom descended - a gloom so thick and dark it may as well be death. Dark thoughts - no time for dark thoughts. Chorei and Ahab paused when Taylor raised herself up once more, staggering over to join them.
"...you're looking serious, kid."
Chorei made a strange gurgling noise from the depths of her bug-ball - took a while to figure out that that equated to a derisive snort.
"She always looks like that. Trust me, I know. I see it every time she looks in a mirror."
"...how do you cope with having this woman in your head constantly?"
"Patiently."
"Fair. But still. What's up?"
"Just wanted to…"
She paused. What did she want to do? Say 'thanks' for the times they'd had, say 'sorry' for the times they hadn't had? Something else entirely? They'd already hugged, and she wasn't a very huggy person, nor was Ahab. The silence was becoming drawn-out. Needed to do something, or this entire exercise was pointless. Chorei was bumbling around, bumping into walls, absorbing small objects to examine before shunting them outwards with a sound like a rock being ejected from quicksand. Her words were dying on her lips. All that remained was a looming ambiguity, a feeling that something should be said, but no idea what that something should be. Taylor held up a single finger, and went for the container of termites. Still two of them, still wriggling with all the energy they had possessed in the meat packing plant. She studied them closely, and they studied her.
"Chorei? You think they're…"
"...hm. You think they're affecting us still?"
"I'm saying it could be possible."
Ahab leant in, examining the insects with a faint sense of revulsion.
"What are they, exactly?"
"Termites. They feed on ambiguity. Associated with the image of a five-horned bull."
"...shit, that's nuts."
"Indeed."
"Indeed."
"So, how do you go about killing them?"
"Squash them, mostly. But I get the feeling that won't be totally sustainable."
"...flamethrower?"
"Turk's looking into it."
"Oh, right, I remember that. Sorry, very drunk right now."
Taylor clapped her heavily on the shoulder.
"It's quite all right, just between the two of us, I'm also very drunk."
Chorei buzzed irritably.
"I am involuntarily drunk. I don't know how to feel about it. I didn't get drunk very often in my life."
Ahab glanced idly over at the nun-bug-ball.
"Oh, right, yeah, you had a life before becoming a centipede nun. Say, small question - did you ever get… you know… laid back in the day?"
"I most certainly did not. I was young, then I was busy training, and then…"
Ahab cackled loudly.
"Oh, that's great. No offence, I'm not trying to mock you or anything, credit to you for becoming immortal… mostly, but seriously, what was the point of immortality if you never had fun with it?"
"My business was more important than interpersonal relationships."
Taylor grimaced. That was hitting a little too close to home. Chorei twittered around, doing nothing of any consequence, mostly just relishing in the feeling of having control over something again. Understandable. Ahab sagged into a chair, and gave Chorei a look. It was odd, the two of them conversing like this… but it was probably good for Chorei to talk to someone else. She had far more reservations with others. With Taylor she could be downright absurd at times, obsessing over tiny details, relishing in miniscule things. Here… she was painfully formal, occasionally polite, even when alcohol was coursing through the brain she lived in.
"Mind if I ask you something?"
"I have little ability to stop you. Go on."
"I've read your book."
"Thief."
"Virgin. Anyway. I read your book. And you're serious in it, like, really serious. Lots of long words and everything, lots of rambling about 'ooh the grafting buddha oooh the mysteries of grafting oooh I'm so mysterious and arcane and occult and super duper serious'. You were like that when I first met you, and right at the end too. Serious, serious, serious, and completely fucking sociopathic. And now you're just… hanging around in a ball. And Taylor can tolerate you. You're even answering my questions about your old life, revealing deeply, deeply embarrassing things, like the fact that you lived your entire life without once getting… well."
She laughed slightly, and Taylor couldn't help but smile.
"So, what changed?"
"I died. You were there."
"...oh yeah."
"Life changes when you die."
Ahab snickered.
"Silence. Everything seems smaller and larger than it once was. The tiny things I never attended to loomed higher than mountains. And the things I once considered paramount aspects of myself seemed… petty. All my years of devotion were nothing in the face of death. I had not become enlightened. I would be returned to the cycle of rebirth, if I was lucky. If I was not, my mind would be consumed by an enemy I thought I had long-since escaped. So the years of labour had been fruitless, time where I could have indulged myself a little more. In the end, all those years of fasting felt like… so much dust on my tongue. In that final moment before the closure, every act of fasting and abstinence I once took pride in felt like nothing at all. When darkness came, I didn't dream of all the bowls of plain, unseasoned rice I had eaten, I thought of the strange smells coming from shops that I had never investigated, the luxuries I had never sampled, the experiences I had never had."
She paused, mulling over her own words.
"I have said too much. But I cannot expect you to understand."
Taylor hummed lightly, curious. Certainly explained the obsession with smaller things. If a near-death experience could inspire a great hunger for anything greasy and unhealthy, an actual death probably worked up an appetite that could never be met. Explained why she was so eager to go to every restaurant she could, to indulge in every food that seemed remotely interesting, to experience life in a way she hadn't before. Wait - a memory was coming to mind. Something Chorei would definitely have never wanted to show her, not deliberately at least. But it had come to mind nonetheless, and had been important to the nun before her death. Important enough that it had lingered in her mind when her life raced before her eyes. A knight who'd journeyed to Senpou Temple, part of an order which had uncovered the Grafting Buddha in their own way, and had sought to learn the truth of his condition. Why had he come to mind? Why had she remembered him so keenly? She murmured idly, but Chorei heard it clearly.
"Sigismund…"
"Why did you say that name."
Her voice was small. A little hurt.
"You… showed me him. Ages ago. Back when you were still incomplete."
"Why did you say his name?"
"Just… I was just thinking. It was nothing. Just an accident."
Ahab leaned forward, her voice dropping and becoming more… serious, in a way.
"Who was he?"
"...a knight I once knew. From a land he called Francia. He came to Senpou and we… became friends, of a sort."
"Tell me about him. Interested in hearing what your friends are like."
"He wore the image of a tortured man around his neck. He regarded our doctrines with a mix of interest and derision. He was loud. Always loud. Bathed infrequently."
She paused.
"I enjoyed his laugh. I enjoyed it a great deal."
"Go on, say more."
"I'd rather not."
"Come on, no-one's overly interested in this ugly mug. They say it's what inside that counts, well, I'm full of pus and rotting organs. So… yeah. Come on, let me live vicariously. Like you do with Taylor."
Chorei was hesitant, not accustomed to speaking of this. But drunkenness was relaxing her inhibitions in the presence of a stranger.
"...I cannot remember the year. But it was when the sakura blossoms were beginning to fall, in the midst of spring. We grew a small number, and… I walked beneath them. I found him there. I had known him for a little while, enough to greet one another casually, but we were not quite friends. He was letting the petals fall all around him, tangling in his hair and moustache. I watched him for a time, let him enjoy the sun while it lasted. But… he looked sorrowful. He missed his home, I believe. So I fetched a little sake from my rooms - a small amount that I kept for myself, though I rarely drank. Better to have the choice and refuse than to be choiceless and always wonder."
"Hear hear to that."
"Regardless. I brought him a little - I knew that he was a heavy drinker in his own country, and I thought he may feel more at home. He had some, I had some… and I made some idle comment. A joke. The first I had made in his presence, I can barely remember the details of it. Sigismund was still for a second, and I thought I had insulted him… then he sprang to his feet, picked me up by my waist and swung me around, laughing happily. He said it was the first proper joke he'd heard since his arrival."
A small but heavy pause.
"I was frozen in the moment, but… I cannot help but remember the feeling of his arms around me. Of his laugh. Of being spun around while blossoms rained down all around. For days afterwards I… would feel a sensation on my skin, a remembrance of where he had held me. Silly sentimentality."
She fell silent, but her last words were flavoured with a deep, abiding sadness. Taylor tried to project some manner of comfort to her, while shooting a warning look at Ahab. She knew how the story ended. And it wasn't something she imagined Chorei would want to discuss. Ahab quietly raised a glass.
"I'll drink to that. Funny to think that… you know, I shot you. And almost chopped your head off. Because you're actually fairly alright - I mean, the murdering and infesting part is a bit rank, but hey, who hasn't done a bit of murder and infestation? I know I've done the former, latter… eh, by a given definition, maybe. Taylor?"
"Both."
"Heh. So, yeah, funny, don't you think?"
"Funny. That is a word."
"...not sorry for doing any of that. But I'm sorry I had to do it."
Chorei hummed disconsolately.
"Alright, come on. Drink! And I'll tell stories about some of the other men I've trapped, and-"
She grabbed at the termite box.
"-show these damn things what they're missing out on, eh?"
Taylor was about to nod… when something bizarre caught her eye. The termites were moving strangely. Still scuttling, still writhing, but for once, their energy seemed to have been drained away. They shuffled listlessly from one side of the container to the other, their whispers were even quieter and less frequent… they looked half-dead. Being taken out of the plant hadn't done a thing, being locked up for hours hadn't made a dent in them, but apparently Ahab handling their box was enough to make them start to act like… well, like insects trapped inside tupperware for most of a day. Taylor leant forwards, examining them closely. Ahab froze, sensing that the mood had abruptly changed… and that scheming was commencing. Taylor poked lightly at the side, and the termites… rolled over, accepting the force instead of resisting it. Was it a ruse to make them let their guards down? Was it just a coincidence?
"Hand me the box."
And the moment Ahab did, the creatures seemed to become more lively. Just a little. Back to Ahab - and the energy drained away as quickly as it had come. Her thoughts were moving quickly - implications, ways of accounting for this. Ahab blinked confusedly as Taylor plotted things out… and when she spoke, the room listened, enraptured.
"...so these things feed on ambiguity."
"That's what you said, yeah."
"Chorei, you remember what happened in the plant when you appeared?"
"They swarmed in my direction. Just as they swarmed in the direction of that blonde menace."
"Yeah, yeah, because they were feeding on… well, ambiguities. And I guess you're pretty… ambiguous, I guess."
"It is conceivable. Death and rebirth… they have opened many doors for me that I otherwise thought closed off by my duties."
"And Ahab, you're…"
She trailed off, trying to put it into words.
"...unambiguous."
Emphasis on 'trying'. Ahab blinked.
"...uh-huh."
"No, think about it. I mean, I've got…"
The sentence died once more. They were getting into deeply uncomfortable territory here. Ahab hummed thoughtfully, and, bless her, decided to complete the thought herself. No discomfort on her part. Some people had all the luck. And those people weren't Ahab, but she still had a certain amount of luck skimmed from the great cauldron of life.
"You've got a whole life ahead of you. Chorei, too. And you've got things to resolve. I don't."
She smiled crookedly.
"Ain't that a shitshow? I'm all done. Over the hill. Termites confirm it and everything. I think there's a bunch of guys in Central Africa who use termites as oracles, apparently they're right. Heh. Should blow a few minds."
Taylor gripped her around the shoulders.
"No, seriously, think about it - they like ambiguities, and you're not ambiguous in the slightest. I mean, are there any… unresolved things that you could go and address?"
"Nope. Family's dead or gone, cut those bridges a long time ago. I'm dying, so… yeah. And all my 'rivals' are dead. Most of my friends, too. Except for you lovable scamps, of course."
Taylor stared at the struggling termites with a feeling of genuine victory. She'd found a weakness. A real, true weakness. The kind that could make this entire operation so much easier it was almost funny. Ideas were spiralling, faster and faster. Everything needed to happen all at once - she had a chance to act, a massive invitation showing her where to go, of course she was going to exploit it. Honestly, she'd been dreading the idea of just sitting around on stakeouts while her research continued. This was excellent. Direct. Unambiguous. Perfect. A real call to arms, a wide door leading to victory. Something nice and bright to burn herself on, Ahab too. If unambiguity could hurt them, starve these things to the point of weakness… oh, she had ideas, she did. Ahab could see a hint of her scheming, and leaned in closer, sagging into Taylor slightly. She weighed less than she once did.
"Come on, no scheming, want to get drunk."
Taylor mumbled into her shoulder.
"You're not already drunk?"
"I'm barely tipsy, come on, want to get more alcohol into me, just…"
She paused.
"...I'll just stay here for a moment, then I'll get some more."
A strange, mournful music began to play from outside their window. It had been going on for some time, but only now did it seem to break through the shifting landscape of clouds. It was a bizarre thing. Warbling and full of words none of them could understand. For a second Taylor imagined that it was some other force come to fuck with them, something unrelated to the termites, the flame, anything she'd yet experienced. The Song Unceasing or something suitably pretentious. Maybe it was - her swarm could find nothing, no speakers, no-one walking around with music blasting from a boombox slung over their shoulder, and certainly no singers. Yet the sound carried nonetheless, muffled very slightly by the mountains of cloud which billowed around them. They were in a tiny concrete island immersed in a sea of fog, only this odd song wafting through the windows to remind them of an outside world. An inverted siren. A sound like the shimmering of water along the edge of a glass labyrinth, a feeling like the clinging of dew to the side of a desiccated lily. It was impossible to describe, this song. The lyrics were inaudible, and all that remained was a faint feeling of aching nostalgia for something that had never existed. Her swarm was lazy in the fog, and perhaps she had missed something, or someone… maybe this was something else that had come to feed on the aftermath of Bisha's little reign of terror. Maybe this fog was the same.
Maybe it was nothing at all.
Or maybe it was everything.
But whatever it was, it was too distant to trace, and she was too drunk to care.
Ahab leaned closer into Taylor, and the two swayed for a moment - first out of drunkenness, and then Ahab committed. Was this dancing? Was this something people did when they danced? When had been the last time she'd danced at all? As memories went, it was… too distant to be fully resolved. Just a vague hint that once upon a time she'd tried this, taken firmly against it, and had elected to not do it in future. Now? She was trapped, and that would have to be an adequate excuse. The two swayed back and forth, and Chorei buzzed around blearily, unsure of what to do or what to think. But she could fell everything Taylor felt. And after that story about Sigismund… well.
Seemed like the three of them were doing just fine.
But ideas refused to cease, not fully. She had to do something - the impulse came suddenly and ferociously, a burning thing that drove her outwards from Ahab's hold. Drunkenness forgotten, she lunged for the phone. Ahab leant back against the wall and watched the show while Taylor scrabbled for the right number, the phone being so old that it couldn't even store contacts. Chorei buzzed uneasily, and the ringing gradually resolved into a sleepy voice.
"Hey? You're awake?"
A pause.
"...yeah, I guess that's fair. Can you come over?"
More silence, and Ahab and Chorei exchanged glances, shrugging in their own biology-specific ways. Ahab used a single shoulder, and Chorei just jittered agitatedly.
"...uh-huh. No, I'm not drunk."
Ahab raised her eyebrows. Chorei mimicked the motion using a pile of woodlice.
"...I'm a little bit drunk, but this is important. We've got a pretty big lead on the termite situation, and-"
The phone clicked, and Taylor blinked.
"She hung up."
"Who?"
"Sanagi. She just hung up."
"Oh."
Ahab nodded sagely.
"She's coming here at top speed as we speak. No doubt about it."
"Really?"
"Dunno, probably. Or someone just murdered her. Or she forgot to pay her phone bill."
A pause.
"...hey, give me the phone, I want to ask her to pick up an arm."
"I doubt she'll get one."
"...hey, so it takes… a while to get from Sanagi's place to here, so…"
"What are you thinking."
"There's a morgue, like, barely any distance away."
"No."
"Oh, come on, it'll be a quick thing, we just run in, grab an arm, be about, you attach it…"
"I don't know how to do it, I'll need time, and…"
"I could probably manage it."
Taylor sighed deeply.
"Chorei, please don't encourage-"
"See, the immortal nun agrees with me, and I helped kill her - if she's agreeing with me, that means a hell of a lot, huh?"
"The point remains that-"
"Arm. Heist. Arm. Heist. Arm. Heist."
She started pounding her fists on the coffee table as she spoke.
"It would be ludicrously risky to go and-"
"Arm. Heist. Arm. Heist. Arm. Heist!"
"I must concur with Taylor, the notion of robbing graves fills me with unease, and-"
"Arm! Heist! Arm! Heist! Arm! Heist!"
"Stop saying arm heist, we're not doing an arm heist, it's a bad idea on… on every level! There is no scenario where I'll be drunk enough to pull an… an arm heist. And that's something - you're too drunk for any kind of heist."
She caught her breath.
"...so there."
Ahab whistled.
"Alright, alright, don't have a stroke about it. No arm heist."
"Good."
She tilted her head to one side.
"...actually, how were you thinking of getting an arm?"
"Well-"
"And if you say 'arm heist', I will find you an arm and slap you with it."
"...no, I was going to buy it. Like a civilised person. Unlike you, apparently - hitting someone with a severed arm, that's just weird."
"I must agree with the leper, that was a truly barbaric threat."
"See, the immortal nun agrees with me."
"The immortal nun also had a centipede instead of a spine and tried to kill all of us."
"Oh shut up."
"Yes, shut up. The centipede was indescribable, the avenues it afforded were limitless. I would ask that you do not insult my last partner."
Huh. That was… a way of thinking about it. She'd never actually caught much of a glimpse of the centipede's personality through Chorei's memories, which was… weird, now she came to ponder it. And the fact that she could ponder it was concerning its own right. It meant the alcohol was processing through her system frighteningly quickly, and the great black wolf of sobriety was hunting her down with its jaws made from hangovers and sore throats, its growl the rumbling of an upset stomach. Too quick for her comfort. Either she was getting used to this, she had become too drunk to notice that she was drunk (entirely possible, she didn't drink enough to know its every in and out), or some nonsense was occurring as a consequence of having an immortal nun grafted to her mind, shining scars along her arms and most of her body, and whatever was going on with those termites.
"...you are being silent. I did not mean to cause offence."
"No, no, nothing, just… thinking, is all."
"Hm."
Ahab jumped in.
"Anything worth talking about?"
"...no, not much, just… lost in thought, that was all."
"Is this a termite thing again."
"Probably not. Might just be a me thing. Really, it's nothing."
"Huh. If you say so. So, wh-"
Taylor cut her off. She could sense something through her swarm. Someone approaching in a car, pulling up outside, exiting… ah. She knew that car, and she definitely knew the person riding inside it. A very, very sleepy cop exited her car and stumbled up to the door, ringing the bell with the air of someone who had reached out to press a button, fell briefly asleep, and woke up to find their finger upon the button with no notion of how it got there or how long it had been there. She rang, removed her finger, and rang again just to be sure. Taylor's swarm was already returning to her control, but she permitted Chorei her little speaker. The nun was clearly taking some enjoyment in being able to actually converse with people - if anything, she was much less insulting. Probably helped when there wasn't a constant intermediary to censor her more egregious statement, id est, 'rotten whore'. She fanned out through the area, checking every nook, every cranny, practically infesting every building in the immediate vicinity. No-one observing, nothing that could pose a threat. Double check. Triple check. Everything was fine - no capes to dive in and ruin her evening. The tea shop was cold, and oceans of cloud moved outside, heaving mountains which glided weightlessly down the street. Beyond, a certain cop waited, dressed in…
Huh.
Well, it'd been very short notice.
"Hey, Sanagi. Nice pyjamas."
"Shut up and let me in, I'm freezing."
Ahab poked her head into the shop.
"Hey, Skeletor, what's up?"
Sanagi looked like she was about to strangle someone, or blow them up with a laser. Taylor let her in, and instinctually clapped her on the shoulder. The moment she made contact, she froze. This wasn't something she usually did. Was… this because of the termites? Did she honestly just miss Sanagi this much? Or was she still very, very drunk? Sanagi was frozen as well. They didn't do this kind of thing. Neither of them knew how to react. Sanagi gave her a look, the kind that she presumably gave Astrid before biting her ear off.
"What are you doing."
Taylor was quite pale indeed.
"I don't know."
"This is very uncomfortable."
"I'm painfully aware."
"Please stop."
"Right, sure, I'll-"
"Ah, if it isn't the one who helped kill me, who investigated when all others had ceased, and, if I recall correctly, initiated the attack which destroyed my home and ruined my cult."
Sanagi's eyes widened.
"Is this why you called me? Because your shop is haunted, Taylor."
"No, that's just…"
The bug ball drifted into sight. Sanagi looked at it for a few seconds, then pinched the bridge of her nose and tried to get her temper back under control. If Taylor was to guess, she'd say that this entire situation represented something of a nadir for the cop. Taylor was still holding onto her shoulder (having forgotten, in her drunken haze, that letting go was probably a good idea). Ahab was swigging from a particularly large jug full of liquid technically only suited for burning warts off mules, and the bug ball was humming ominously with the voice of a woman she thought to be long-dead. And Taylor was only now realising that maybe calling her up was a bad move, born of excitement and alcohol. But she couldn't exactly go back on it. Just like she couldn't go back on grabbing her shoulder, a mistake she was continuing to perform as the seconds rolled by.
"How do you Americans say it - long time no see."
Sanagi pointedly ignored her.
"Why did you - please take your hand off my shoulder - call me?"
Taylor thought about her next response, in the processing missing the order to let go.
"Termites. We found something interesting about them today. Where they're from, who's spreading them… and something that might be able to put them down."
Her glass eyes somehow brightened a little, shimmering merrily in the pale moonlight, and Taylor swore she could hear small 'pops' around her skull as stars bloomed into existence and disappeared just as quickly.
"What do you know about that meat packing plant that was abandoned around the same time the power stations went down?"
Sanagi blinked, half-living eyelids sliding over never-alive eyes. She even ignored Taylor's continued grasp, as her mind clicked to new conclusions. A wicked grin began to spread across her face, possessed of a cold, hard cunning which even Ahab's chaotic cackles couldn't quite match in terms of sheer threat. The cop towered, capable of turning everything around her into a blasted heath, clad primarily in luminous pink pyjamas and a heavy pair of combat boots, hair somewhere between 'disorganised' and 'a war crime against good taste'.
"Oh. I know about that place."
The smile widened.
"Let's talk."
"Ah, most interest-"
"Shut up, nun."
As Chorei buzzed indignantly, Sanagi's smile softened slightly as she looked at Taylor. Hesitantly, she reached out and patted her on her own shoulder, the motion stiff and unpracticed.
"It's good to see you."
"...good to see you too."
"I'm downright ecstatic to see you, Sanagi, now, you want a drink? I'm getting a new arm, I'm fighting termites, I'm going to get shitfaced."
"Barbarian."
Sanagi sighed.
Business as usual, then.
