Taylor
This Tattletale person was suspiciously helpful.
Sure, Taylor had apparently helped her and her friends turn a running, losing game of cat and mouse against Oni Lee into a victory that resulted in severely reducing his effectiveness and mobility. Having a monster the size of a Volkswagen stomp on your legs while you're distracted by wasps in your eyes would certainly have that effect on a person.
And they avoided killing him, even while he was helpless, which she was sure kept Lung's ire from falling even more heavily on them than whatever they'd done to piss him off in the first place had.
So a certain amount of reciprocity was understandable. Favors and information were cheaper than lives. In most cases, anyway.
But even after she'd called in enough to balance the scales in her book, she kept texting, and Taylor couldn't help but enjoy the attention. There had been a dearth of kind words and affirmations in her life as of late, for multiple reasons. And she didn't pry… mostly because it seemed strongly implied she already knew everything Taylor might have wanted to tell her. Plucked the information out of thin air, seemed like.
Which would normally be cause for alarm, but she always offered more in exchange, as though she'd willingly volunteered the information instead of having it… pulled from her thoughts, apparently.
Taylor was still suspicious, only more so when Tattletale seemed to
notice whenever she started to feel alarmed and withdrew just before she would say something about it. That way lay a spiral of paranoia, however, which simply wasn't productive towards her goals.
And Tattletale was helpful, with information, advice, and even supplies.
And also made her smile. Which seemed to confuse the hell out of Sophia.
Taylor knew better than to think of her as a
friend, but it was… nice, to actually talk with someone. Even if she tried to keep conversation businesslike and professional and to-the-point.
And nicer to have cars she didn't have to
steal borrow without permission.
She was anxious about it at first, but Tattletale basically described them as rental cars. Swapped out make, model and license plate each mission. Apparently this sort of off-the-books vehicle service was fairly common… for supervillains.
All things considered, being a Nazi was immeasurably worse than being a criminal, much less a thief, so Taylor let it slide in the interests of practicality.
That was the good news.
The bad news is that her dad had finally started to notice that she was spending a lot of time 'with friends'. The accidental glimpse he caught of her cell phone as she pulled out the battery was enough to spur him to ask questions and actually act how he expected a father should act.
Which, unfortunately, led her to this.
"Sophia."
Her eyes flicked towards her before turning back towards the road. "What?"
"I need your help maintaining my cover."
A longer sidelong look this time, idling at a stoplight. "How?"
Taylor took a deep breath. "Dinner with my dad."
She heard her inhale sharply through her teeth, a look of what she assumed was distaste on her face. Taylor hurried to add helpful details. "It would just be forty minutes, an hour tops. We can pretend we're friends for that long. Then I've got a plan I think you'll like, afterward."
She was silent for a long minute.
"I'll pay extra for your time, obviously."
Still nothing.
"I'm making lasagna?" Taylor added, trying not to come off too pleading and failing.
I sound pathetic.
"Fuck it," Sophia finally agreed.
Yes!
And so the next day had Taylor and her highschool bully and literal partner in crime sitting around the dinner table with Dad revealing just how bad her family was at conversation without Mom around.
Which was bad.
Really bad.
Taylor realized she probably should have warned Sophia that most of the time they ate together was in complete awkward silence. So this was par for the course for her, at least.
Dad tried to start conversations. "So, do you have a lot of classes together?"
Taylor answered quickly. "Sophia has been helping me exercise. For gym. She's on the running team. I help her with… chemistry."
"Oh," Dad said. Sophia nodded, eyes on the lasagna, chewing mechanically. "It's been a while since Taylor has brought a friend over," he added, unhelpfully.
Taylor could see Sophia quickly smother a sneer, thankfully before Dad noticed. She said nothing.
"Oh! It's been ages since you've had Emma over. Why don't you invite her over sometime as well?"
Sophia choked on her lasagna. Took a long pull of water while Taylor figured out how to address that dramatic irony.
"Dad," Taylor said carefully. "We've kind of drifted apart the last few years." To say the least. "But I still run into her at school."
As little as possible.
He seemed a bit disappointed at that, but at least let the topic die a messy, natural death.
Thankfully he had an early morning and let them go out for their 'sleepover' with a discreetly passed twenty dollar bill for pizza and/or snacks. Taylor almost felt bad for lying to him, but knew it was for the best.
She had never been so grateful Sophia wasn't a big talker as on the long, awkward drive from her place to the largely abandoned strip mall Taylor had chosen for the surprise.
Tattletale had told her, among other useful bits of information, that the Protectorate had started building a file around her war against the Empire. They'd even given her a temporary name, apparently based on some common elements among the different techniques she had used.
Sarin.
Which was both stupid—as she had no means of creating or finding that admittedly useful neurotoxin—and situationally ironic, considering it was created and used
by Germany in World War 2. Apparently Taylor had been given a low Tinker rating for only using supposedly mundane chemical weapons, a similarly low suspected Thinker rating for tracking down targets, and a moderately high Stranger rating for not being caught on any video or eyewitness accounts. Which she was quite proud of.
Tattletale also helped confirm details about a target's schedule, personal life, home address, and habits. Even provided some very small recording devices, delivered via dead drop and then installed via her swarm, to help nail down all the specifics.
Which all led to her leading Sophia up a fire escape onto a rooftop, hauling up folding beach chairs and a small cooler with soda. She unfolded the chairs and arranged them just so, oriented towards the show to come. Sophia seemed weirded out about it, but at least had spent enough time with Taylor to not bother asking, assuming she'd find out soon enough if it was important. She had promised her something she'd like, after all.
Her phone buzzed.
Tt: "sooooooo"
Tt: "how'd dinner go?"
X: "It went fine."
Tt: "that bad, huh?
"
Taylor didn't bother responding.
Stupid perceptive Tattletale.
Tt: "toldja i wouldve gone w/u
"
. For all that Tattletale was friendly and helpful, along with being entirely too observant, she was
unpredictable. Sophia, despite being an unrepentant bitch, was actually quite reliable. Taylor knew what to expect with her.
Tt: "uuuugh fiiiiine ill leave u to the fireworks"
Heh. Fireworks.
Interestingly, the thing about pretending to be a chemical Tinker is that one actually did learn things about chemistry.
Like how to make homemade thermite and a chemical incendiary trigger.
And how to hide them where they wouldn't be noticed.
Taylor glanced at her watch. They were early, but within margin of error. She leaned back into her chair, cracked open a soda. Beside her, Sophia did the same, alternating between looking at Taylor and looking in the direction she was oriented, clearly expectant.
Minutes passed. Sophia seemed to start to get restless.
Taylor started to feel a hint of nerves herself. Had she made a mistake? Was her timing off? Had something thrown off her calculations? She almost texted Tattletale, but didn't think she'd have anything useful to say they hadn't already discussed earlier. Her phone buzzed while she was still considering.
Tt: "babysitter was late, relax"
What a
suspiciously well-timed message from the Thinker. Still, at least thinking about
that helped keep her mind off waiting for—
She saw it. A flare of light, actinic, bursting into life, sweeping up into the night. She glanced over to alert Sophia, but her eyes were already tracking it.
And together they saw it as it started wavering, smoking, burning.
Purity, on fire, falling from the sky.
The faintest echoes of a scream, carried on the crisp spring breeze.
Their eyes followed the blazing comet down as it fell behind a line of buildings, the light and sound abruptly cutting off.
There was a movement out of the corner of Taylor's eye. Insects shifting in space.
Sophia was holding out a fist. A punch? No. Just hanging there, between them.
Taylor awkwardly tapped her knuckles against her friend's.
