Taylor Dannan

[Catgc]

No. I was reading that section as Morgana talking bout Taylor, not about Airmed.

Click to shrink...

She was referring to Airmed though...

 

[ScreamyBirb]

It might seem out of character for Carol to not argue, but she's a lawyer. She will definitely know damn well to shut up and nod along when having A Talk with a mandatory reporter, because if she manages to come off as uncooperative or aggressive... well, the next visitor with pointed questions would be Child Services, and probably the PRT as well since the family in question are all parahumans (with an offer to induct the kids into the Wards in exchange for making the Problem go away, of course).

 

[Darkphoenixlady]

Chapter 13

Morgana strolls carefully through the edge of the Otherside in the maximum-security prison near Boston. As she goes, she ensures that she looks through the walls into every cell just in case it contains her target. Walking around another door she enters a corridor with a steep slope heading down. Which is unusual, as elsewhere in the prison they use stairs or elevators.


Given that she's not had any luck with the upper levels so far, she follows the slope down into the lower levels. The first place she passes is the empty morgue, which explains the slope. After that are a number of standard office doors and a break room with some prison guards relaxing inside. Finally, there is a stretch of vault doors with rotating slots for food.


Experimentally, Morgana puts her hand on one of the vault doors. When it just sinks through the door with no give she smiles. As there will be no rattling to give her away.


She passes into six empty cells before she finds the first occupied cell. A young man with no obvious restraints. The next three cells are empty, then the fourth cell has another unrestrained man in it. Finally, at the end of the corridor she finds a woman wearing a mask with a straw coming out of it along with heavy looking restraints on her wrists and ankles. It takes barely more than a thought to push the mist into the cell proper and pick up the sleeping prisoner.


The restraints prove more problematic, as she can see no easy way to remove them without dismembering the prisoner.


Morgana shakes her head, no. Not prisoner, Canary or Paige McAbee. With a wave of her hand she turns Paige into a cat without any of her clothes or restraints, which clatter to the floor. With a faint smile she turns into the mist and makes her way to the domain of a Dannan that she had to sever from his domain so many centuries ago.


Once she arrives, a mere thought cancels the illusion on the sleeping cat, and another to open a portal to her bedroom to grab a track suit. Then she carries Paige into the wooden fort, and to a larger than normal bed.


Then she begins her hunt for the previous owners tiompán that she dumped in here after she'd done her duty as The Great Queen. That done, she busies herself with ensuring that Paige has enough to eat and drink if her second experiment is viable.

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As Scathách looks at her empty throne room, she glances at the long tables that used to be filled with the sound of laughter and boasting. And now. Now they're covered with all her research into the arcane secrets of magic.


To think, once she'd been a warrior without peer and a trainer of heroes. Until Manannnán mac Lir. Mac Lir and his accursed cloak. Of course, that's not the way mac Lir told it after he cursed her. According to him, she betrayed him when she not only spurned his advances, but also helped his wife get free of their marriage vows.


But no, he conveniently forgot that he removed Cú's memories after Fand seduced him shortly after he arrived back in Ireland. And it was because of that that Cú forgot about her nephew until after he'd already slain him.


Scathách smiles as Barabla, one of three maids still in her service, walks into the throne room and glances over the strewn staves that are inscribed with her notes and research into the curse, the slates full of charcoal diagrams and notes; and the wooden slats where she's painstakingly copied out the diagrams that work. It's one of the things she loves about her…


Scathách's mood plumets as she realises what she's just admitted to herself. The shadow queen they call her. Even after she divined the secrets of the gods powers and grasped them for her own. Even after she devised a way for those sworn to her service to maintain their youth and vitality, their life linked to hers for as long as they remain sworn.


But now she's cursed another to a brutal death in the near future.


"My queen, I see that you've been investigating the eighth arc, and the link to the Sea Lords power. Have you perhaps come closer to finding a way to break your curse?"


Scathách pushes herself off her throne and walks over to the table with a confidence she doesn't feel. When she gets there, she puts her and on Barablas shoulder, "I'm sorry, but I haven't. I must also confess something."


Barablas looks at Scathách with a curious expression, "What is it my Queen?"


Scathách takes a deep breath and says, "I fear that you are to be the next victim of the curse, for I have fallen for you."


Barablas cocks her head to one side, "Excuse me for my impertinence, but I do not believe you are attracted to the flesh of women."


Scathách smiles as her eyes rake Barablas down and up, "If only the heart was that simple. As I did not fall for your body. I fell for you, so studious and insightful, and yet so dutiful. It was only after I fell that I started to appreciate your body."


Whatever it was she was expecting, Scathách didn't expect Barablas to burst out laughing, "My Queen, while I am touched by your concern, and flattered by your attention. I am in no more danger from the curse than I was before."


"Pray tell, what have you seen that I haven't?"


Barablas moves over to a section of staves and starts running her fingers down them. When she finds the one she's looking for, she picks it up and runs her finger down the Ogham script to the point she needs.


"Here, look at this section."


Scathách takes the staff and quickly glances at it with her eyes, "This is the deconstruction of the curse, specifically the target."


Barablas laughs gaily, "But can't you see? The curse doesn't just use the word man in the common tongue, it also uses it in the flows of magic."


Scathách puts her fingers on the staff and starts to read it with one hand, while her other hand starts sorting through the wooden slats for the overall diagram of the curse. She's just reached the end of the staff when she finds the slat. She moves her hand back to the top of the staff and begins to read again while she follows the diagram with her finger and eyes. Her eyes widen with excitement as her mind starts to reinterpret the words based on the diagram, rather than basing her understanding of the diagram off the words.


As she reaches the end, the staff clatters to the floor when Scathách spins around and lifts Barablas into a hug and spins around with her, "You are an absolute treasure. No wonder I love you. I can only hope you return my feelings."


Barablas smiles and lays her forehead against Scatháchs, "We all do. That's why we stayed rather than leaving to seek a mate. It was better to be near you than to suffer the touch of a man."


Scathách makes an extremely provocative move as she places her right cheek against Barablas' cheek. When they part, Barablas fans her face, "My Queen, you have me all flustered."


"If you are to be my partner, then you will need to get used to calling me by name."

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Taylor wakes up with a gasp as the dream, memory, whatever the fuck it was, sears itself into her memory.


Rubbing the sleep out of her eyes, she pushes herself out of bed and goes looking for her mother. When she can't find her in the house, Taylor yawningly stumbles into the mist and follows the feeling of her mother's magic.


As she steps out of the mist into the cool temperatures of late fall the cold helps wake her up fully. As she's getting her bearings, Morgana comes walking towards her from a hill fort.


"Acgarat, what are you doing here?"


Taylor steps forward and wraps her arms around her mother, "I, had a weird dream or something."


Morgana forces a small smile onto her face, "Come, I have just started a pottage, and I have a boar roasting inside. It wouldn't be any more work to mull some mead while you tell me what you remember."


A few minutes later, Taylor is sitting on a skin that's been draped over a well-built bench. The smell of the leaves and spices Morgana is using to mull the watered-down mead. As Morgana sits down next to her, she asks, "Are you ready to tell me what you saw?"


Taylor stares into the fire as her mother's arm goes around her back in a very modern gesture of comfort. Taking strength from it, Taylor smiles slightly before she says, "I was Scáthach. I guess it started when I, she was wallowing, maybe ruminating, on the past. Something about a curse and Manannán Mac Lir."


Morgana nods as she listens as Taylor describes the dream. During the retelling she fills a wooden mug with mulled mead and presses it into Taylors hands.


As Taylors story comes to an end, Morgana hugs her more tightly for a moment, "I suppose I should have expected something like this to happen."


Taylor looks at her mother questioningly, "What do you mean?"


Morgana looks into the fire herself, "I was around two centuries old when Macha passed her domain over to me. It was after her last mortal husband, Cruinniuc died. She was tired of the cycle of death and 'rebirth' she was forced to go through, along with bearing half-mortal children who would grow old and die before she was able to return to the mortal world. When I agreed, I wasn't prepared for the memories that came from taking her domain. I solved the issue by splitting my mind and my body. My father through my husband, he removed himself from his domain before he handed it to his son on our wedding day. I think it's because I split myself that Anu approached me when she tired of existence."


"What does that mean for me?"


"You are a legacy apprentice, you are going to be taught everything that your master knows. What better way to understand their teachings, than to have their memories to understand them?"


"But I'm only 15, how do I compete with so many years of memories?"


Morgana sighs and a bit of fat flares in the fire as it drips from the boar. Eventually she says, "You don't. Not while staying yourself anyway. You need to find a way to co-exist with them. Whether that's by compartmentalising your mind, or divorcing yourself from them, or some other method of keeping them separate from who you are."


Taylor nods thoughtfully before asking, "What was Macha like?"


"She was always involved in sovereignty in some way. Whether it was as a queen in her own right, or giving birth to the next king, or even being a foil for a bad king. Her favourite lives were those where she was only known as the mother of the new king, and she could live with her chosen husband quietly without revealing herself. She thought her last life was going to be like that, until her husband joked that she could run faster than the kings horses. Alas, fate wasn't kind to her, and the king demanded that she prove it, or her husband would be killed."


"What happened?"


"She won of course. Then she gave birth at the finish line. As she was screaming in labour, she cursed all the men of what is now Ulster. They both died young when the results of her curse became apparent. That last relationship was a love match, and I think that's why she got tired of life. I imagine that if the Christians hadn't arrived, at some point I'd have passed on my own domain. But by the time I wanted to, there wasn't anyone to pass it to."


They both trail off as Canary stumbles into the hall with wild panicky eyes. "Where am I? Who are you?"


As Morgana starts to stand up, she says, "Taylor, you should go home and get some more sleep before Charlotte arrives."


Taylor shakes her head, "Mom, why is Canary here?"


As she's walking over to Canary, Morgana says, "I rescued her from prison." Taking Canary's hand, she leads her back towards a bench, "Come on, I've got some real food cooking. Though you've woken up a sooner than I expected, so only the pottage is edible."


"But, I can't prove I'm innocent if I'm not…"


"Paige, or do you prefer Canary?"


Paige looks down, "Paige please."


"Paige, when was the last time you spoke to someone. I mean verbally."


"I… I used to sing to myself."


"I'll make it simpler, when was the last time you spoke to your attorney?"


"I got an e-mail from him last night. They've finally set a court date."


"Have you ever spoken to him, face to face, or even over a telephone?"


Paige looks away and in a small voice says, "No. He said that he can't risk being mastered."


"Have you ever shown any signs of being stronger than a normal person?"


Paige laughs, "I once held a boulder over my head. It was one of the polystyrene ones we were using as set dressing."


She immediately covers her mouth, "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to do that."


Taylor frowns, "What? Laugh? I think you have a nice laugh."


Paige shakes her head, "No, use my powers. You should really leave me alone, otherwise I might make you hurt yourselves."


Taylor shrugs, "Not feeling it, sorry. I'm more interested in why you were in prison. As last I heard, you were seen in Las Vagas."


Morgana quietly says, "She was arrested because she told her boyfriend to 'go fuck yourself' when he tried to congratulate her."


"What? No I didn't. Well, I told him to 'go fuck himself', but he wanted half my earnings. He wasn't there to congratulate me. He tries to get in every show, and usually security stops him. But it's not the first time I've told him to fuck off."


"According to the news article from the day after your arrest, you mastered him into cutting his cock and balls off, and using them to fuck himself."


Paige nods, "I know, but I didn't know he was mastered. All the stage crew and backing singers wear noise cancelling headphones to avoid that."


Morgana nods, "And how do you communicate with them?"


Paige shrugs, "The techs do something to stop whatever allows me to master people from going through the mic."


Morgana nods, "So the technology exists to do that. Which begs the question, why weren't you allowed to use it to speak to your lawyer?"


"They froze all my assets, and took all my equipment as evidence."


Gently, Morgana says, "Paige, there was a Simurgh attack last week. They had to quarantine the city."


Paige starts to say, "Why does that… My trial is next week."


Morgana nods and glances at Taylor before she says, "I didn't rescue you only for you to be arrested and hung out to dry again. I-I have a couple of places for you to call home, but first you need to eat this apple."


Paige looks at the apple that's just appeared in Morgana's hand. It's smaller than any apple she's ever seen, and green. Swallowing hard, she says, "And what if I don't want to eat the apple."


"I can drop you off in Egypt. If you can avoid being recaptured, you might be able to find protection under a warlord somewhere in Africa. I'd offer South America, but I don't know any safe countries down there."


"And if I eat the apple?"


"I have a friend who lives in a land that doesn't need to deal with the PRT or the Protectorate. It's not China or Russia by the way. It's just somewhere where the chances of Endbringers attacking is almost zero. That's one option, or I might set you up with your own home in the mountains, and you could visit the people you care about on your own schedule."


Taylor stares at the apple and opens her mouth to say something, only to close it again when Morgana waves her hand in front of her face.


Paige stares at the apple apprehensively, "What does the apple do?"


Morgana thinks for a moment, and Taylor blurts out, "You could think of it like a tinker tech apple, it will hopefully give you a spark of power that you can grow."


Morgana nods, "That's a better explanation than mine was going to be. If it overloads you with power, my friend is an adept teacher and he can help you learn to control it."


"So, what is this an offshoot of Cauldron?"


Morgana raises an eyebrow, "I have no idea who or what Cauldron is. So, no. But if it helps, our 'organisation' has been around a lot longer than parahumans have."


Paige gives a dry, hiccoughing laugh, "He. Hehe. It figures. I bought my powers from Cauldron, and now I'm a Guinea Pig for another organisation. Give me the apple."


Morgana nods and walks around the fire to where Paige is sitting, "You'll need to eat it all, core and seeds too. And don't throw it up."


Paige mutters, "Well it can't be worse than the vial."


Then she starts to eat the apple. When her eyes screw up and start watering, Morgana relaxes and sits down next to her. As she rubs her back she says, "You're doing well."


Taylor jumps up and rushes around the fire as Paige finishes the apple and immediately doubles over clutching her belly. "Mom! What have you done to her?"


Morgana smiles broadly, "Shown that the apples Scáthach has are the safe ones."


"Mom! What are you going to do now?"


Morgana looks around with a smile, "I'm going to give Paige a place of her own."


"Mom…" Taylor says warningly.


"I'm telling the truth. And I'm acting as Queen here."


"Fine! But you better provide her the support she needs."


Morgana sighs, "I was going to get Airmed to do it if Paige doesn't get the memories she needs."


Paige coughs, "What. What are you talking about?"


Taylor hands over her half-finished mug of mead while Morgana points at a stringed instrument Taylor doesn't recognise.


Morgana pulls out a dagger and holds it hilt first towards Paige, "All I need you to do is cut your finger and place the wound on that instrument."


Paige "What?"


Taylor looks at the instrument with narrowed eyes before pulling Scáthach's staff from the mist. "Mother, is this a domain inheritance?"


Paige looks up at Taylor, "A what?"


Morgana nods, "It is. We both have people we care about, and we have been forced to join the cape game. I would rather test this one someone worthy, but who I don't personally care much about, than on our friends and family, and have them die on us."


Paige staggers to her feet, "Hold on a second. What's this about dying? And I don't think the apple did anything except give me cramps."


Morgana smiles, "Oh, it did. It worked perfectly. You now have a spark of magic inside you that you didn't have before. Given twenty years and the right training, you could learn to become stronger than any single parahuman I've ever heard of. But it's a hard path, as if you push too hard, or not hard enough, your magic will disappear."


"The dying bit. That seems important."


Morgana smiles, "You still have some of your fire, that's good. The previous owner of this domain was a musician, though I had to help sever him from the domain when he abused his power over mortals and refused to answer prayers. It's a shame what happened to Fionn though, as he fell victim to his own success."


"I really want to know about the dying bit. Not that it bothers me too much, as it's the same deal I got with the vial. But I still want to know."


Morgana looks at Paige, her eyes glowing white, "Paige Rose Macbee your fate has yet to be decided. I see you dying to a bullet to your head as you ride through a desert, I see you die choking on a button battery in Russia, I see you dying in childbirth surrounded by enemies that pretend to be friends, I see you dying as a monster attacks a city, I see your eyes going blank as a Chinese man speaks to you, I see a golden beam of light obliterating you and many around you. There are so many more dooms awaiting you if you escape these. Which doom is the better doom has yet to be decided."


As Morgana sags, Taylor catches her and steadies her while she recovers. Paige seems wild around the eyes as she stands up and backs away from the two of them. "What the fuck was that? When I asked about dying, I didn't mean how many gruesome ways it could happen."


Taylor laughs humourlessly, "My mother is a doomsayer. A type of seer. Um, a thinker that can predict the future. At least she didn't predict that putting blood on the instrument will kill you. Which means at worst it just won't work."


"What do you mean?"


Taylor falls silent as she tries to remember her mother's lessons. Before she has, Morgana sits up straighter and says, "It means that while that 'gift' of mine is working, I can see the ways a mortal will meet their doom without immortal intervention. But seeing those dooms also changes them, which is why I nearly always see multiple. Or so I'm told. One other truth about seers, no matter what sort, is that anything of they future they see, they also forget. The only record of what was said is in the minds of the witnesses, and any recordings these days."


Paige stares at Morgana for a while, before looking at Taylor, "You're sure it won't kill me?"


Taylor shrugs, "More sure than making any decision that sees you returning to Earth Bet now won't result in one of those endings eventually."


Paige chuckles manically as she slides down the wall pulling at the feathers in her hair. "I am so fucked right now."


Morgana walks over and slides down the wall next to Paige, "No you're not. There are two paths forward that I can't see, that nobody can see. The first is that you put some blood on that instrument and see what happens. The second is that I take you to live with Oberon. He used to be called Ogma, way back when. I don't think my daughter is going to let me just strand you on Earth Bet somewhere."


Taylor nods, "Damn right. You should have just left her in the cell if you were going to do that."


Paige pushes herself off the wall, and scrubs the tears away from her eyes as an almost fatalistic expression comes across her face. Bending down by the bench, she picks up the dagger and shuffles over to the strange instrument.


As she's doing that, she says, "It's funny. All I ever wanted to do is make people happy and sing. It's why I bought my powers. It's why I fought through how they fucked me up. It's why I've been singing for the last three years. And then my boyfriend didn't wear any fucking hearing protection. How the fuck was I supposed to know that he was under the influence of my power!? What am I supposed to be, a mind reader? Now I find out that I'm probably dead no matter what I do. Why? Because I have feathers, and my powers allow people to be controlled."


As she starts sobbing, she takes the dagger to her wrist and grabs at the instrument. "Why can't they just let me sing? Why do they have to Ahhh!"


Taylor tries to go to Paige as she starts to scream, but Morgana holds her arm. "No Taylor, she's not dying. She's connecting to the domain. Go home, and if Airmed's there, ask her to come and find me. I'll stay here and look after her."


Taylor gives her mother a sceptical look, so Morgana adds, "I promise I will stay at least as long as it takes Paige to recover and hold a conversation."


Taylor scowls, then brightens as she thinks of something, "Fine. Hang on, didn't you say that Airmed gave Amy a stone? I'm going to send her a message asking her to tell Airmed that you need her help."


As Taylor disappears into the mist, she hears Morgana say, "You don't…"

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Emily stumps into the secure conference room two hours before her shift is due to start, with a scowl on her face. As she makes her way around to her chair, she spots the large coffee mug and gives Rennick a nod of thanks. She shouldn't be drinking that much caffeine, as it's going to play havoc with her already fucked kidneys. But if they're going to call an emergency meeting and force her to delay changing her dialysis liquid. Though, as she's here anyway she can get it done in the onsite infirmary rather than opening her own stocks.


Emily has just taken her first sip of coffee when the screen pops to life with four images plus the Chief Director in the middle.


Emily grunts a good morning before she goes back to her coffee. As the other images start to move the Chief Director seems to look disapprovingly at the coffee in Emily's hand.


As the last image starts to move the Chief Director says, "Director Armstrong, you had some rather disastrous news last night?"


Armstrong's video shows how tired he is as it grows to fill most of the screen. Tiredly he says, "We had a breakout from the regions maximum security prison."


Emily sighs, "With all due respect, why is ENE involved in this call?"


Armstrong rubs his face and says, "Because of how the prisoner escaped. The prisoner was Paige Macbee, and she escaped from a MacCivic facility. As they are a private prison that has permits to hold most parahumans, including brutes, it took us several hours to get footage of what happened."


"That still doesn't explain why we're on the call. I can understand New York as you're less than 250 miles away. But apart from Brockton Bay, we look after miles of nothing."


Armstrong nods, "Sorry, I only got three hours sleep before I was called back in. Let me play the video and you'll see. There's no sound, because of Canary's power."


Emily takes a swig of coffee as a video of the inside of a cell starts playing, and they see Canary lying uncomfortably on a narrow cot. As the other two directors start to voice their complaints about the restraints she's wearing. Emily just sips her coffee as she focuses on the screen.


She's rewarded when the screen starts to fuzz over and mist starts to fill the cell. All too soon, there's so much static on the screen that it's barely possible to make out any of the fog in the room. Almost between one moment and the next the video clears up, and the fog disappears.


As the video ends the Chief Director says, "As you can see, Canary didn't leave on her own. We need you all to discretely keep an eye out for her. Also, Emily, as the only one on the East Coast with any parahumans with anything resembling power over mist, or looks like mist. We would like you to keep an eye on them, and find an excuse to bring them in for questioning."


Emily shakes her head, "Night and Fog have left the E88 for some reason, our last reports put them in Boston."


Armstrong shakes his head, "We have them at a bar at the time of the escape. However, I believe a recording of Badb circulated the internet a week or so ago."


Emily shakes her head in denial, "No, we are not doing this. I've familiarised myself with what she did in Ireland. I am not putting my mens lives at risk trying to arrest her. We already have one perp that has the lower body of a female deer because he wouldn't stop running his mouth."


The Chief Director frowns, "Why wasn't this in a report?"


"Because it's only Tuesday, and the BBPD transferred him to us when he tried to beat up a black guy in holding over the weekend. We have some black officers and janitors, and he made disparaging remarks at them, even though it made his symptoms worse. We couldn't call Panacea in, because she was in M/S all weekend, and only got out yesterday. It's now, 0723 and it's unlikely that Panacea is awake yet."


"Do the scientists have any ideas about what's happening?"


Emily shakes her head, "Not as of when I went home yesterday."


"Do you think Badb could have got to Boston?"


Emily glances over at Rennick who nods, "Not sure, probably. We've seen her turn into a murder of crows, and whatever her mist mover power lets her do. But she's nigh on seven feet tall, so unless she's got a stranger ability we don't know about. She's a little hard to miss."


The Chief Director sighs, "Well, at least get someone to ask her. You never know, she might even admit it. As it stands, the urgent information has now been communicated. Canary is to be considered a fugitive from the law, and arrested on sight."


Armstrong asks, "What about her restraints?"


The Chief Director shrugs, "It's out of our hands, as she was been charged and held by the State. I'm sure that the appeals court will have a field day once Canary has faced trial. But we can only advise them."


As the screen flickers off, Emily pushes herself to her feet, "Well, I'm going to get my fluids changed before it kills me. If you can think of some way to question a cape that can teleport, let me know."

 

[Gbamorton]

My father through my husband, he removed himself from his domain before he handed it to my son on our wedding day.

Click to shrink...

Would that be be the Dagda/Donn and Aengus for the father/husband and son respectively (Aengus is normally the son of the river goddess Boann, but I couldn't think who else "the son" of Morrigan/her husband/Dagda could refer to)

Also are technically all Irish people descendants of Donn/the Dagda in this? As that was the among the reasons the Tuatha could be defeated by the Millesians (the people of Donn) since the human invaders were more demigods of a death/underworld god.

 

[Darkphoenixlady]

Sorry, that should have been his son.

And her husband is The Dagda. (Donn is dead)

 

[Sesparra]

Someone's upset their cauldron plot isn't working~

 

[ptbptb]

If you can think of some way to question a cape that can teleport, let me know."

Click to shrink...

I've got one. Politely.

 

[Daemion]

Paige was so done with everything, she didn't even heed the warning to keep quiet about Cauldron. It makes sense... she was railroaded into the worst future, was kept in isolation (which is regarded as torture) and was restrained 24/7 (which is cruel and unusual punishment). I wouldn't be surprised if she lost the ability to give a fuck about her own life. She probably lost all hope.

While Cauldron likes being an urban myth, they don't want anyone to have actual confirmation. This is how they find people determined enough to obtain a vial.

Piggot is in a pickle... sure, she can ask Morgana about Canary... but if she actually gets an answer, she'll be forced to act. I don't think she wants to upset someone who can casually turn people into deer and is known for some seriously grisly acts in Ireland.

 

[Ame]

Wait, she cursed a dude to slowly turn into a doe? Was that off screen? Cause that encounter sounds hilarious.

 

[Darkphoenixlady]

Wait, she cursed a dude to slowly turn into a doe? Was that off screen? Cause that encounter sounds hilarious.

Click to shrink...

See the side story

 

[Ame]

Thank you. And yeah, I think he's likely to wind up as venison.

 

[Allemoc1]

View: https://youtu.be/1a5hXaWtVXo?si=PEWE3qPWeTHmjWz0

Well not a perfect fit it's still fits

 

[SolusEclipse]

Thanks for the story!

 

[Ashkari]

On the legal side of things, Morgana's attorneys have taken on the case for both families on contingency

Click to shrink...

Oh god. A wormfic written by someone that actually knows what a contingency lawsuit is?! And against Winslow to boot?!

Truly, the end is nigh.

———-

Lmao, jokes aside, I am so tired of the trite old bs about Danny or Taylor not pursuing a lawsuit that would absolutely be a slam dunk, 'because they don't have the money'. Contingency and pro-bono are a thing!

Hell, entire organizations exist to help try and match minors who are the victims in severe bullying cases with lawyers who are willing to do such cases pro bono!

There's no reason they shouldn't be able to find someone unless Danny is failing extra hard and not shopping around! And he should know better than take the first offer / excuse at face value, especially if its hyper-competent fanon Danny!

 

[Epsilon Rose]

Oh god. A wormfic written by someone that actually knows what a contingency lawsuit is?! And against Winslow to boot?!

Truly, the end is nigh.

———-

Lmao, jokes aside, I am so tired of the trite old bs about Danny or Taylor not pursuing a lawsuit that would absolutely be a slam dunk, 'because they don't have the money'. Contingency and pro-bono are a thing!

Hell, entire organizations exist to help try and match minors who are the victims in severe bullying cases with lawyers who are willing to do such cases pro bono!

There's no reason they shouldn't be able to find someone unless Danny is failing extra hard and not shopping around! And he should know better than take the first offer / excuse at face value, especially if its hyper-competent fanon Danny!

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If I recall correctly, the expense they were concerned about was the medical bills, not just the lawyer fees. So, sure, they might be able to find a lawyer to take it on contingency, but if the school drags things out, it might not matter.

 

[Ashkari]

but if the school drags things out, it might not matter.

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Doubtful. Any competent lawyer would drag either the school or the perpetrators' families into paying for the charges anyhow, which means it'd be child's play for them to then get the judge to put a hold on them. Especially if they represent a serious financial burden for the victim.

Also, regarding 'dragging things out' — by and large that really only happens at the corporate level between companies. Judges tend to take an extremely dim view of organizations trying to do that to individuals, especially in clear-cut cases with a preponderance of supporting evidence.

I've got a major hobby of reading/listening to legal blogs that cover that kind of stuff, and it's always entertaining listening to a judge 'very politely' verbally evicirate a lawyer who's trying to play games with the system.

 

[Epsilon Rose]

Doubtful. Any competent lawyer would drag the school into paying for the charges anyhow, which means it'd be childs play for them to then get the judge to put a hold on them. Especially if they represent a serious financial burden for the victim.

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You say that like rich people and major companies don't regularly ruin people in court by dragging out cases, even when it's obvious they should lose.

 

[Ashkari]

You say that like rich people and major companies don't regularly ruin people in court by dragging out cases, even when it's obvious they should lose.

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Yes, I do. Because they don't. Not often. What you're basing that argument on is observer bias brought on by the fact that media loves to cover sensationalist stories. I challenge you to name a dozen that don't somehow involve celebrities.

Does it happen? Yes, occasionally. Do we have a robust framework these days of various things such as Anti-SLAPP laws to give private citizens more recourse against bad actors? Also yes.

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More to the point… is Winslow a wealthy private citizen or a major corporation?

No, they are not. It's a school district, and one that's badly struggling for funding to begin with. They would have to pay tons of money themselves just to drag out such a lawsuit, with money they clearly do not have nor wish to spend, money that they'd have then spent on top of losing said lawsuit. Meanwhile, the victim's family are paying nothing to their own lawyer until the case —which should have already been determined by the victim's lawyer to be a slam dunk, otherwise it wouldn't be offered on contingency— is resolved.

This is a losing proposition for Winslow. The moment discovery starts, Winslow's lawyers are gonna be telling the school to settle ASAP.