Making my way through Silent, quite good. Thanks for the reccomend.
Transposition, or: Ship Happens [Worm/Aoki Hagane no Arpeggio | Arpeggio of Blue Steel]
- Thread starter ensou
- Start date
- Crossover
Are you thinking of George12? He wrote something like 4+ large chapters a day and was posting them on a daily basis. He wrote Apathy, Commanders, Hitchhikers (PA Multicross) and Dawn of Worm (40k/Worm/ACH Crossover). Both of those were pretty experimental on his part. Also he was definately not posting a backlog as he would change the direction of the fics on the same/next day depending on what the readers said to him.
Unfortunately the last thing we heard from him was that he was feeling a bit under the weather in January, and then he just disappeared :/
Grounders10
Nine-Tailed Kitsune
- Location
- British Columbia, Canada, Mars
And that's not ominous at all....
Ruinous Virtue
Paving the road to hell
- Location
- Blacksburg, VA
Same. Ya know, out of everything I've ever read, I've never hated a character quite as much as I hate Emma. I have a really hard time letting it go when I see a fic doing a redemption thing with her. Yeah, she's broken, and traumatized, and needs professional help. But she threw away a LIFETIME of friendship effectively overnight, when she knew Taylor was still recovering from the death of her mother. That's something that can't be forgiven. And the worst part? If she'd just given Taylor a chance, T would have done anything and everything to help Emma recover from what happened in that alley.
I think it says a lot when, out of all the totally unforgivable evil bastards in Worm, the one I hate most is one that's technically not even evil- just a total bitch.
Mandabar
Waifu of choice is Rem. Give that girl some hugs!
- Location
- Florida, USA [Yes. Florida *FacePalm*]
And that's not ominous at all....
I noticed that as well, but was less worried when I noticed it shows he was recently on the site on his profile. As recently as March 16th. As to why he hasn't posted anything since then... hope everything is going for him.
Czlyydwr Llrngwl
"Sell ya a door Learn gull," Czly/Celly for short
- Location
- Where the Beef is
- Pronouns
- Any
Betrayal is perhaps the worst of crimes (I'd argue about it compared to rape) and Emma really worked and strove to turn betrayal (and of the viewpoint character, just to compound it from the audience's perspective) into an art. Coil and Jack Shit are still the only regular cast members I'd have a hypothetical SI go out of their way to straight up murderize ASAP, but Emma is on the "don't bother crossing the street to piss on her if she's on fire" level of The List.
Baughn
Healing-type writer
- Location
- Dublin
I think this conversation is going in circles. We all basically agree; Emma's actions are beyond the pale. Where we differ is only in how much beyond the pale they are, and whether or not we'd ever be willing to forgive her, even if she changes back.
That's not that interesting an discussion, to be honest. It would take a literally inhuman point of view to forgive her before she changes, and Taylor appears to have such a view...
Can we talk about what that means for Taylor, and who she is? She hasn't quite noticed it herself, but it seems like she's getting less human by the day.
That's not that interesting an discussion, to be honest. It would take a literally inhuman point of view to forgive her before she changes, and Taylor appears to have such a view...
Can we talk about what that means for Taylor, and who she is? She hasn't quite noticed it herself, but it seems like she's getting less human by the day.
BungieONI
Seven gremlins in a trench coat
- Location
- Lickwidget
- Pronouns
- She/Her
It's very subtle. Verrrrry subtle. I think it has to do with her accelerated thinking, emotional shut off, and that certain things aren't there any more like sweating. I found it hilarious when she thought about overheating:
In chapter 1. I am absolutely certain that she is still Taylor Hebert. The most noticeable bits of change otherwise, that have less to do with her mind and more to do with the fact that she is ridiculously overpowered when compared to Brockton Bay and she kinda knows it, is her pride. Interestingly, if I was going to compare her to any of the Mental Models we see in the manga/show I would say she resembles Kongou because of her new found pride as a Fog Experimental Platform. Maybe pride is a battleship thing?
Either way it only seems to be giving her a lot of food for thought. Some of it distressing, but I can see other parts of it where her teenage enthusiasm is going this is fucking awesome!
- Location
- Canada
To be fair (while i appreciate the fact they agree with me, obviously), the post they quoted is over a month old.
That discussion really is quite dead and nothing has happened in the actual story since then to make it worthwhile to bring it up again.
Grounders10
Nine-Tailed Kitsune
- Location
- British Columbia, Canada, Mars
Now if only there was something new.... *Looks hopefully at Ensou*
- Location
- Existance
You could pretty easily lump them together, in a way. Rape is a betrayal of our own assumed social relationship. Technically speaking, there's little difference between rape and, say, beating the crap out of someone as it's all physical assault, but socially it hits our taboos and moral hot buttons so the bigger result is a breach of the trust we have in our own lives/society.
Then again, I suppose you could say that about virtually anything...
Morphic Tide
Crazy Brainstormer, Munchkin and Wannabe Min-Maxer
- Location
- MI, USA
Have there been any chapters past Diatonic 1.4? If so, they are missing threadmarks.
WarriorServent
Friendly Lurker
- Location
- My Chair
There isn't, just a slow updating author with a very active following.
ensou
Magical G̶i̶r̶l̶ Servant Mordred-chan
- Location
- NEW YORK CITY!??
- Pronouns
- She/Her
I mean, there is, it's just not been posted yet
Went off to the editor last week, got it back Tuesday, lots of edits to make, couple scenes to adjust, have to actually write the end, but... Should be up next week, all things permitting.
Grounders10
Nine-Tailed Kitsune
- Location
- British Columbia, Canada, Mars
Ensou hast spoken! Please be true! *Hopeful fox eyes*I mean, there is, it's just not been posted yet
Went off to the editor last week, got it back Tuesday, lots of edits to make, couple scenes to adjust, have to actually write the end, but... Should be up next week, all things permitting.
Burning Baron
This position needs more entrenching.
- Location
- In here, not out there.
We can hold on. I know we can.
- Location
- Philippines
I mean, there is, it's just not been posted yet
Went off to the editor last week, got it back Tuesday, lots of edits to make, couple scenes to adjust, have to actually write the end, but... Should be up next week, all things permitting.
Well thank you for abating my fear of this fic dying. (Too much of the things I really want to read have the dreaded "This thread lies dormant for more than x years" banner)
ensou
Magical G̶i̶r̶l̶ Servant Mordred-chan
- Location
- NEW YORK CITY!??
- Pronouns
- She/Her
So my stories usually go into hibernation when I run out of an outline or don't know what general direction to go. That's what happened with Torment (though I actually worked on that last week, so it's not truly a death flag). I've got simple Arc ideas for this story listed through Arc 12, with chapter-by-chapter outlines for Arc 2 completed, though they're subject to adjustment with the introduction of unexpected elements, so I don't anticipate running out of chapters.
I seriously wish I could build up a buffer for my stories so I could have regular releases, because that was so nice when I did that starting out (I used to manage a 7.5k+ chapter a week for Torment, with a 4+ chapter buffer), but it's also harder to do with more than a couple active stories. I probably could, but it would mean taking a two or three month break of posting anything in order to get everything in line and written.
Twei
I have a face!
- Location
- the land where they write things
- Pronouns
- They/Them
o7
Honestly, the fact that you have ETAs on your fics and update them semi-regularly alone makes you kind of amazing in my book. Like, five million different kinds of amazing.
Diatonic 1.5
ensou
Magical G̶i̶r̶l̶ Servant Mordred-chan
- Location
- NEW YORK CITY!??
- Pronouns
- She/Her
I bring you words.
I have to thank @Twei and @Baughn for their comments and suggestions, and Mazotori for being such a fantastic editor, who without which this would not turn out nearly as polished as it does.
Diatonic 1.5
Tuesday, April 12, 2011
I don't have problems falling asleep anymore. If I want to I just do. Like pressing a power button. Boop. Sleep mode.
I suppose that makes me lucky.
It means I'm not kept awake by errant thoughts or an overactive imagination. Worries about the next day or things that I've done or failed to do don't haunt my waking hours, like they might for other people.
Because I'm not other people.
Because… I'm not human.
Or did simply having these thoughts, these doubts, realizing that those problems are something I don't have anymore, make me all the more human despite myself? Despite the fact that I… I'm not?
Not flesh and blood, not even having something close to resembling a human brain, instead simply a collection of synergistic programs, intertwined and entangled to provide the most complex and accurate facsimile of a human mind without being the actual thing.
A fake. An imitation.
Did… did I even have a soul?
I didn't know.
And I wasn't sure I wanted to know.
Wednesday, April 13, 2011
School the next day was weird, for a number of reasons. The first being that the first time I saw Emma, it looked like all she wanted was to storm over and tear me a new one, but Sophia grabbed her arm and whispered something to her, all while keeping her eyes locked on mine.
Emma's eyes hardened as she continued glaring at me, but when Sophia let go of her arm, she made no move to come over to me, instead just sniffing and turning away.
And from there the day only got stranger.
"What's that?"
"Huh, what?" Greg said, hurriedly closing his notebook and crossing his arms over it.
Good god, could you be any more obvious?
It was third period, Gladly, and we hadn't started class yet as the man fumbled trying to get his slideshow for the day working, so instead people were talking and doing whatever.
I ran over the flicker of memory for a second, my check only confirming what I thought I'd seen.
"You… draw?" I asked incredulously. He flushed.
"Ah… er, what are you talking about?"
I just leveled an unblinking stare at him.
It really helped that I didn't actually need to blink.
Greg fidgeted uncomfortably, and then looked away, down at the notebook under his arms. "Ah, um, yeah, I guess. Maybe, you know."
"People?" The thing I'd seen him working on looked like a profile of some sort.
"Designs," he corrected, and then flushed further. "I mean, nothing important. Just uh, sketches."
They hadn't looked like sketches, actually they'd looked pretty professional.
His evasiveness was only further piquing my curiosity.
"Can I see?"
His eyes widened. "I, erm, I guess? Sure?" he said hesitantly. "It's nothing, really, just like, stuff." He shifted the notebook around, and then almost warily handed it over.
I took it from him, and then opened the front cover. The first page held a near-perfect replica of Eidolon in costume. Side profiles, angles, everything. There were sketches, some in pencil, others inked, some incomplete, others even colored in what had to be marker –though it was different from any marker I'd seen–
And it wasn't just Eidolon's usual costume, the next page held more, alternatives with different cuts, pieces, but all retaining that iconic green, shaded in and giving a sense of depth.
I moved on to the next page, but instead of Eidolon there was Alexandria. Her standard costume, and then a number of different ones, some hard armor, others soft, but all keeping the lighthouse and her black and steel-grey color palette.
Moving through the sketchbook, it was the same for a number of capes, some I recognized: Legend, Hero, Armsmaster, Miss Militia, Vista, Faultline, Triumph, Dragon, Shadow Stalker, Gallant, but there were also others I didn't. Sometimes there were even three or four pages dedicated to a single person, notably Armsmaster and Faultline. And Armsmaster's alternate costumes were intricate, areas magnified to show how sections of the armor meshed and interlocked.
Dragon's… were totally unexpected. Instead of the dragon armor, it was tight suits that made her look… robotic, but human. A segmented section over her spine, and armor that lay over itself in parts like scales. It reminded me a little of Kid Win's armor, or that one Aleph character that he'd based it on… Iron Man, but deep purple, practically black, and more dragon-y.
And then, as I flipped to the next page, moving on from some cape named Atlas, I froze in shock.
It was me. Well, not Taylor Hebert me, Relentless me.
It was my armor, but not. I assumed that was because there were no pictures of me out yet, just a description of my costume. It still had the steel plates, but… different, more refined, professional.
"She's a really new cape," Greg suddenly said, and I looked over at him. "But it's super rare that you get a girl in armor like that. The whole black-knight theme, I mean. The last one was Galahad in Sacramento. She's"–he nodded at the page, indicating he was talking about me– "got some sort of super-strength –I mean, she choked out Lung– and this force-field that does kinetic manipulation. And yesterday they got some pictures of these really awesome symbol things that show up all over her when she gets serious, like she's going into overdrive or something."
They got pictures of my fight from Squealer yesterday? How?
I went over the fight in my head, looking at every angle, and then groaned internally. Traffic cameras. And what looked to be a security camera on a corner-store a couple doors down from where we'd been fighting.
Greg flipped to the next page and pointed at the notebook, and I saw there were really well-done sketches of my sigils. Not all of them, only what I assumed was visible from the angles they'd gotten the pictures, but there was still that iconic symbol I'd carved into my chestpiece.
Fog.
I flipped to the next page.
And then froze.
The alternate costumes were different. More different than any of the other alternates I'd seen for the other capes. Instead of my plate-armor, it was a number of form-fitting super high-tech suits. Some were pitch-black, others had silver parts, and some of the black ones even had characteristic white lines and accents that I could tell based on the shading were glowing, matching my sigils.
They were like the Dragon designs I'd seen, but less cybernetic and plated scale, more hard armor.
"I tried to do the medieval theme a couple times, but it just didn't feel right, with the amount of black that dominates her costume, and the fact that they're saying her armor is tinkertech anyways… well, I just went in that direction."
Wait… what? Why do they think that?
"–And there was this really awesome Earth-Aleph movie last year that had these cool black helmets with these hard-cut lines and geometry that seemed to fit perfectly, so I used that as inspiration in this one," he said, pointing at the one I'd been looking at.
They were… beautiful.
On the page after there was a body armor design that was like a meld between Dragon's and the alternates I'd seen so far, with flexible-looking undersuit and black armor panels in the areas that my normal armor had, plus a bunch of extra places, like a complex line of chevrons starting at my neck and ending at my lower back as armor over my spine.
"These are… really good, Greg."
And I wasn't just saying that. Who knew someone like Greg, one of the most socially awkward and introverted people I knew, could do something like this?
"A-ah, um, thanks? It's just a hobby. I started it doing character designs for the DnD group I'm a part of, and then I started doing capes just 'cause, y'know?" I looked over at him.
"Do you put these on PHO?"
"Oh, um. No?" he said timidly.
"You seriously should," I told him. "I think people would really like them."
"You think?"
I nodded. "Really."
"Oh. Um, maybe I'll do that, then. If you really think people would like them…" he replied.
"Alright, time to get started!" Gladly called from the front of the room, forcing me to reluctantly close the sketchbook and hand it back over.
Greg's designs made my current armor feel almost… inadequate, having seen what I could have instead, the sorts of things I could do. My plate armor had been a design of necessity, because there was only so much you could do when working steel by hand –literally– and I'd spent a good section of my budget on the undersuit and fastening parts for the plates.
…Only to find out it was totally pointless the day after I used it the first time.
But the point was, with what I'd had I thought I'd done pretty well. Now, though, I could do almost anything, just like my clothes, and I'd seen just how far that could go in those drawings.
I sighed, forcing myself to stop thinking about it and focus on class, even if it was Gladly.
With Madison, Sophia, and Emma not bothering me today, I felt confident enough to abandon my lunch spot in the bathroom and venture up to the secluded rooftop of Winslow.
It was open to students normally, with rusting benches in places and a tall, seven-foot wire fence at the edge of the building. I sat on one, staring out on the neglected grounds and simply enjoying the warm mid-April breeze as I kept running my simulations. I'd mostly finished my big project, and now was focusing more on figuring out what to do with my body. I was pretty much done and ready for testing out my first configuration, but knew that I'd have to probably go through a bunch of revisions before I finally got what I wanted.
Releasing a huff of air, I started cannibalizing my internal nanomachines, ripping apart the molecules into their constituent materials, and then beginning to process of constructing my skeleton atom by atom.
It was gonna take a while.
"Hi."
I jumped at the sudden intrusion on my thoughts, turning to look at the source of the voice.
A medium-height girl with strawberry-blonde hair sat a foot and a half to my right on my bench, looking at me.
"Hello?" I replied hesitantly. Why was she talking to me?
"Nice weather, isn't it?" she said, closing her eyes contentedly and leaning into breeze.
"Yes?" I agreed. "…Um, who are you? …And why are you here?"
She turned back to me and opened her eyes –very blue eyes, I noted–, giving me a wide disarming smile. "I'm Brianna!" she said, holding out her hand.
I stared at her for a moment, and then looked down at her hand, slowly moving my own forward and grasping hers, shaking it.
Social ritual complete, she drew back, continuing to smile at me. "I just wanted to see if you were doing okay. You know, with those bitches bothering you again."
I blinked and stared at her.
Whaaaa…?
The way she casually cursed was completely at odds with her bright voice. Was she talking about the trio?
"Um… yeah? I guess so?"
"That's good," she said, putting her hands on the edge of the bench and leaning on them. "I thought they were leaving you alone, but then they started pulling that stupid stuff again this week."
I eyed her. "Why are you talking to me?"
Her smile dropped a bit. "I just wanted to. And I wanted to say I'm sorry I haven't before now. I felt really bad when they were doing all that stuff last semester, but I …couldn't," she said, sounding a bit apologetic. "But then I saw you sitting here, and it was perfect timing."
"Okay…"
I wasn't quite sure how to feel about that.
"Anyways, I was wondering you wanted to hang out sometime or something? My friends and I are going to the mall this weekend, if you want to come with," she said. "It's not like it's a big deal or anything."
I hadn't been to the mall since Mom died and Emma…
And this was the first time someone had talked to me for no reason since last school year, practically.
What the hell. Why not.
"Sure, I guess," I replied.
"Great!" She reached down, unzipping her backpack and taking out a notebook and a pen, flipping through the pages to find a blank one before writing down something and tearing out the page. She folded it up until it was a smaller rectangle, and then held it out to me. "Here's my number. What's yours?"
I froze, the piece of paper in my hands.
Technically, I didn't have a cellphone. Except…
Maybe I could? I mean, I got internet, right? Could I do the same with cell networks?
Yes, the answer came instantly.
Huh. So all I needed was a number, and I didn't even really need that.
I needed to be careful, though. Choose a number that didn't exist. Maybe just make something up? But what if I gave her a number that somebody already had? Then again, the chances of giving her an already-used central office code for our state was like fifteen in nine hundred. So I randomly generated a suitable seven digit number, resolving to check later and make sure that the CO code wasn't already used. If it was I'd just give some excuse that I got a new phone or something.
Satisfied, I rattled off the number, which Brianna wrote down in a different notebook. "I'll text you after school, 'kay?"
I nodded.
The bell suddenly rang, and Brianna looked up at the sound, before bending back over and packing her stuff away. "It was nice talking to you!" she said, smiling once she was done.
I nodded, still a bit off-balance from the entire interaction.
Brianna swung her bag up onto her shoulder and began heading towards the door to the rooftop. "See you later!" she called, looking over her shoulder and waving.
I just smiled and waved back, unsure of what else to do.
And then I was left on the roof, struggling to understand what the hell had just happened and what it meant.
Unfortunately no answers presented themselves, and I went through the rest of the day practically in a daze, between dealing with and repeatedly going over my introduction to Brianna and constructing my skeleton.
So. Much. Carbon.
…I was probably going to have to go out and buy a couple bags of charcoal to eat.
Don't look at me like that.
I seriously needed the stuff. Unlike you squishy water-based humans, I was planning on being at least seventy percent carbon, and my nanomachines were mostly exotic materials and metals. Carbon was in limited quantity and I needed more, and nuclear synthesis could only get me so far.
Thankfully, using carbon also meant that my weight shouldn't change all that much, so I wouldn't be falling through the floor or squashing any chairs just by sitting on them anytime soon. I'd be able to compensate using the nanomaterial I retained, anyways.
I only had part of my spinal structure done so far, but it was progress. The tests I was continuously putting it through as I constructed it were doing well, but then again that was to be expected after having simulated it down to an atomic level and running those same tests virtually.
I'd successfully avoided thinking about Emma and what to do about her throughout the entire day …though I didn't know whether to consider that an accomplishment or not.
Once school was over and we were finally released, I was itching to go out again in my armor, but my desire to continue working on my skeleton and to check on the nanomaterial in the Boat Graveyard won over, so instead I headed towards the Docks.
I knew there was a hardware store relatively close to the route I was taking, so I angled towards it and spent fifteen dollars on a pair of seventeen pound bags of briquettes. The checkout guy looked at me dubiously before asking if I needed any help with them, and I laughed to myself as I told him I was stronger than I looked and could handle it.
I happily walked off with my newly acquired raw material, eventually entering an alley, adjusting my body, and manifesting my armor once I'd gotten close to where I wanted to be. I made my way up to the roof with panels of my Armor, and then continued on my journey to the edge of the Docks.
Rather than actually going into the Graveyard itself, I instead stopped on the last building before the Bay, sitting down on the edge and tearing open one of the bags before realizing my mask was in the way.
…Okay, yeah, I could have just absorbed the stuff into my body like a giant amoeba, but as I've said repeatedly, it was the little things that kept me sane and grounded, and eating using my mouth was definitely one of those things.
So I simply reabsorbed the bottom half of my silvery mask and began munching on my snack.
Please don't ask me what it tasted like. I don't think I can accurately describe it in a way that humans can comprehend. Nonetheless, it was carbon. With some extra stuff, but that just gave it flavor.
I checked over my nanomaterial as I ate, satisfied with the progress it was making in replicating. Only another twenty four hours and it would be enough for my first project.
Of course, that didn't mean I would be stopping anytime soon. The ship I was chewing through at that moment was more than double the mass of my project, and I fully intended to convert the entire thing to nanomaterial. As well as all the other ships in the Graveyard.
Once I hit fifty tons of nanomaterial was when the conversion would really start to take off. Doubling that every five hours… I could have the Graveyard done in under a week.
And oh, how I wanted that.
I wanted my engines. My hull. It was an almost all-consuming need I had. I was Fog, and I felt incomplete as I was.
Soon. Soon.
I sighed, pushing aside the desires I couldn't fulfill and focusing on the fusion generator in the rear of the ship I'd left it on, thirty meters out in the bay. My antimatter setup was working nicely, as inefficient as it was.
Oh well, beggars can't be choosers.
I should have enough by the next day for at least testing my project, but I wouldn't stop it anytime soon, the more I had the better, and there was no telling how long that tinkertech generator would last.
I licked my fingers as I finished off the second bag of charcoal, putting them aside to throw away later. My spine was coming along nicely, almost done by that point, and I paid close attention to all of the segments that functioned as vertebrae, making sure they had full mobility.
I kind of wanted to try out some of the alternate armor I'd seen in Greg's notebook, but I knew that wouldn't be very smart, since he'd recognize it immediately if pictures got out and then wonder how the new cape he'd been drawing had one of his own designs when only one person had really gotten a good look at it.
Yeaaaaaah. I didn't want Greg figuring out my identity, thank you.
Well, maybe he'd actually post them on PHO, and then I'd have a perfectly good reason for changing my outfit to match.
250-XXXX: Hi Taylor!
I blinked. So that's how text messaging worked inside your own head.
Hi, I sent back, figuring that was the best response.
What r u up to?
Not much. Just hanging out right now. And you know, eating the Ship Graveyard after a light snack of charcoal.
Cool. Sat 10am @ Middleview work?
I didn't really have anything else going on, so… Yeah, sure.
Alright :) came back, and then immediately after. Sorry, gtg, have work. Ttyl!
It was… weird having someone actually invite me to something. It hadn't happened since before high school. Before Emma. But it was kind of nic–
"Hey."
I jumped. Again. God fucking damn, what the hell!? Seriously? That's the third time this week!
Why was I having so much trouble being aware of my surroundings?
I turned to look at the girl sitting next to me on my left, though I already knew who it was from her voice.
"…" I just stared at Vista, before finally getting a hold of my voice. "Hi?"
I looked around for the second Ward that she was with, though I couldn't see anybody. "Where's your partner?"
"No partner. It's just me today," Vista replied, looking in my direction.
"I thought Wards patrolled in pairs?" I asked, slightly confused. That's what all the stuff I'd read online said.
"What, I'm not good enough to be on my own?" she asked, irritation creeping into her voice. "Or is it because I'm too young? Because I'm not old enough?"
Ooookay then. Don't question Vista's capabilities. Clearly a touchy subject.
"No, no, I just thought… you know…" I scrambled to recover. "I didn't expect to see you alone."
"Well, you thought wrong," she huffed, annoyance still present.
"Sorry," I apologized, though I wasn't quite sure for what. It just seemed like the right thing say.
She nodded.
Vista was quiet for a minute before she spoke. "I'm not technically on duty or patrolling, so no 'buddy'," she said, making air-quotes with her fingers. "I'm just getting away for a bit."
I nodded slowly, turning to look out at the bay and the sunlight coming from behind us sparkling on the water.
"You fought Squealer yesterday?"
"Mhm," I confirmed.
"They brought in that giant van-tank thing, there was some pretty serious damage to it," she commented.
"Yep."
Vista turned to me. "They upped your ratings. Again."
I paused, and then slowly turned to her. "What?"
She nodded, turning to look out at the bay. "Brute six, now. And Shaker four, Mover four, Blaster two."
I almost snorted. Blaster two? Wait until they saw my cannons, and then we'd see who was Blaster two.
"They really want you on the Protectorate. Miss Militia's been telling Armsmaster that they need a good versatile heavy hitter-slash-defender and you're practically perfect."
"Yeah, thanks but no thanks," I said. I was only more sure of my decision now. After finding out what I could really do with my nanomaterial, and the high possibility that would be restricted if I joined something like the Protectorate, I was all the more protective of my autonomy. Not to mention the thought of being under somebody else's command and having to follow orders really rubbed me the wrong way. "…Is that why you're talking to me?"
"No." She hesitated. "Okay, maybe a little bit. Armsmaster did tell Kid Win and I to talk to you if we ever saw you again, try and improve relations and all that shit. But I couldn't care less about that."
"So what then?" I pressed. There was no way she wasn't here for a reason.
Vista shifted uncomfortably before taking a deep breath. "You aren't human, are you?"
I froze. And not just metaphorically, no, I froze. All of my nanomachines, everywhere, halted.
Fuck. Fuckfuckfuckfuck.
What did she want? How did she know? How had she figured it out? Was she going to tell everyone?
"I've got this sort of… sense, of where I can push and pull," she said, holding her hands out in front of her, and I vaguely noticed that the distance between them was changing even without her moving them. "I know where I can stretch and twist and compress everything. But I can't do it to anything living, and people are these sort of sticky areas that stop it." She looked back at me. "But you…"
And suddenly my left arm was ten sizes smaller.
Everything felt wrong and disorienting and my nanomachines were giving me garbage feedback and it was all I could do to keep them exactly how they were–
Just as quickly, something shifted, and things made sense, I had control again, but my arm was still way too small.
"What the fuck!?" I screamed. "Stop that! Let go!"
My arm was instantly back, proper sized, looking like nothing had ever happened to it.
I breathed heavily, glaring at Vista, though she wouldn't be able to see it behind my mask. She still seemed to get the message.
"Sorry! I didn't know it would be like that, I was just trying to show you what I meant!" she rushed out.
"Don't ever do that again," I growled menacingly, my sigils flaring up all over my body and my fists clenched tightly. My Wave-Force Armor surrounded us, trapping us in a sphere of white panels.
Vista nodded immediately. "Okay, okay, shit. Sorry."
I kept glaring, but allowed my combat systems to go dormant again and forced my hands to relax, my Armor fading away.
"Fuck," she cursed, breathing slowly, like she was trying to regulate herself. "Sorry. I didn't know it would be like that."
"What do you want?" I ground out. Was she going to blackmail me or something?
"What?" she asked, sounding surprised.
"What do you want from me?" I repeated.
"I… What? I'm just curious. You're different. The first person who I could ever do that to. Are you some sort of special Case 53 or something? Is that why you wear a full-body suit?" She glanced at my gloved hands. "Your hands look normal, though." she noted, sounding confused.
I didn't say anything.
She huffed. "Shit, okay. Look. Just, can you tell me if I'm right or not?"
I remained mute.
The portion of her face I could see flickered with annoyance, and she turned away from me to face the bay.
The silence remained for eight minutes, before she finally spoke up. "I don't like the Wards," she said softly. "That's why I'm on my own."
What?
"Not the others, the people, I mean like… the organization," she clarified, waving her hand in a vague manner. "We don't do shit normally."
Her hand went down.
"They send us on routes that are low-risk but high-visibility. We do PR events, smile and talk about how great it is. But we never actually fight unless there's like two Protectorate babysitters and it's practically guaranteed that we'll win. And the Youth Guard tries to limit even that. We're only allowed a certain number of hours, and the Protectorate basically tells us exactly how to act."
"I mean… isn't that their job? To provide oversight and make sure you're safe?"
"Yeah, but I'm thirteen! I've been a Ward for over two and a half years. You know how many times I've actually fought? Seven. Seven. Not that I even really got to do anything. They treat me like I'm made of fucking glass because I'm the youngest and a girl, even though I've been on the team longer than everybody else!"
Okay, I could see how that could be… frustrating. I mean, I'd had three fights in as many days, and my first week wasn't even over yet.
"So why are you, then?" I asked. "On the Wards, I mean."
She frowned and turned away again. "My parents," she said, and I could hear a tinge of irritation.
"Ah."
"Yeah, fucking 'ah'." She drew her legs up to her chest, hugging them. "That's why it's just me here. I can't fight, but at least I can use my powers without getting docked for it."
I could understand that. I was Relentless, but I couldn't do anything unless I was in my armor. If that were to be actively limited and restricted, I don't think I'd manage very well either.
"So what about you?" Vista asked, still staring out at the bay. "What are you?"
I was between a rock and a hard place. Tell Vista what I was –at least partly– and maintain control over the information, or risk her telling her superiors and it getting out with everybody jumping to the worst conclusion?
Plus, she'd just told me all of this stuff about herself when she didn't have to. And I got the sense that wasn't something she normally did.
"I swear I won't tell anyone if you don't want me to, I just… really want to know," she said. "Is it related to your powers? Are you a Case 53?"
"No, I'm…" I sighed, deciding that it showing was probably best, and it wouldn't give away everything, letting her draw her own conclusions. "Just… here."
And for the first time, I absorbed my armor and reverted all of my surface nanomachines' configurations to their base state, leaving me as an indistinct female figure of pure silver.
I could just tell Vista's eyes widened, even if I couldn't see them behind her visor. I don't even think she was fully aware as she reached out to touch my arm, running her fingers over the perfectly smooth surface.
"You're… beautiful."
I would have blushed if I had the capability. Thankfully, I didn't at that moment.
"You're like a girl Silver Surfer."
I didn't get the reference, but that was easily remedied by looking it up online. It was apparently some comic book character from the sixties and seventies, and there were also pictures from an Earth-Aleph movie six years ago. From what I could tell, it was a pretty accurate description of my current appearance.
Though turning silver wasn't even close to what I could really do.
…I decided to mess with Vista just a little, it was only fair after what she'd done with my arm.
It took less than a second to readjust and reconfigure my body, color blooming across my surface as I fluidly shifted, leaving me small, with thin arms and legs, green armor on my chest, a white skirt with wavy green lines, and a visor on my head.
"Holy fuck!" Vista yelled, moving backwards a few inches from me. "What the hell!?"
"What?" I asked her in her own voice, smirking at her.
"You-you're me!" she said, pointing at me.
"No, I'm me," I responded, still smirking.
"Oh my god." Apparently curiosity won over surprise, because she moved close to me again, and started poking me all over. "You feel so real!"
I swatted her finger away. "I am real."
"I didn't mean it like that, I meant…" she struggled before shuddering. "Can you please go back? That's really, really weird."
Deciding I'd achieved what I wanted, I grinned and I reverted back to the featureless silver form.
"So this is… you?" she asked.
I shrugged. "Pretty much."
"Are you a Case 53 or something?"
I shook my head. "No. I just triggered and became… this," I said, gesturing at my silver body, omitting telling her about the weird dream-like experience I'd had in the process.
"So you're really not alive. No wonder I don't have any problems with you."
I leveled a glare at her. "Screw you. I'm alive, thanks."
Am I really, though? A computer and nanomachines?
Vista frowned. "I didn't mean it like that, I mean, like, you're liquid metal or something right? That's what it felt like."
"Yeah, basically," I replied, sighing.
"Do you even need to eat? Drink?" she asked.
"I… can eat, but I don't need to," I told her, my focus wandering over to the charcoal bags a few feet behind where she sat.
Vista followed the change in my line of sight and swallowed. "You ate those?
"Yeah," I confirmed.
"How does that even work? No, what does that do?"
"It goes in my body like when you eat? I'm just more… aware of it."
"What? No, wait, why do you eat if you don't need to?"
"I can sort of mess with stuff once it's inside me," I told her, not giving away the fact that I wasn't exactly limited to my body. Better to keep that to myself so that if this did get out, people wouldn't see me as much of a threat. "Change it, shape it into other things… yeah." I shrugged.
"Things like what?"
Should I?
I mean, really, should I? I'd be giving a lot away with this. But, she'd trusted me, right? Couldn't I at least trust her? And it wasn't like it was anything super secret, considering she knew about my body.
…
What the fuck, in for a penny, in for a pound. Not to mention her reaction was probably going to be priceless.
I reached behind me, pushing my hand into my back and grasping the thing I'd been working on all day before pulling it out and around my body.
"Things like this," I said, holding my pseudo-spine in front of her, the structure swinging a bit from the sudden motion and the flexibility derived from the fully articulated joints between the segments. I was particularly proud of that.
Vista once again scrambled backwards a few inches. "What the fuck is that? Is that your spine!? Did you just pull your spine out of your back!!?"
"It's not my spine. Well, not yet at least," I told her. And then I tossed it at her.
I wasn't exactly worried about it. It was practically impossible to be harmed, so there was nothing to fear if she didn't catch it. However, she did out of reflex, struggling to get a hold on it from how easily it flexed and nearly slipped through her hands like a giant, wet noodle.
"It's… amazing," she said, holding it up and staring at it. Composed of geometric segments, the bottom half, which was completely done, was a dull dark silver with the same material as my union core coating the vertebrae. The upper half was less complete, and it showed in the highly reflective clear segments that threw light everywhere. "What's it made out of?"
"Diamond," I told her honestly.
Her head whipped up so fast I half expected to hear a crack. "What!?"
"It's diamond. Not completely solid, though, that would be really brittle. It's aggregated diamond nanorods held together in a matrix of nanotube and linear acetylenic carbon fibers, sealed in an spatially complex exotic metal," I explained. It felt good to show off a little about what I doing. I hadn't gotten the chance before, and it was so nice to just let go and not have to totally hide my capabilities.
"How much is this worth!?"
"It's literally priceless. …Maybe a couple billion or so if I had to give it a number?" I guessed. It was four or five pounds, so that felt right.
Vista just stared at me. "So you're a Tinker too? A-and your suit was actually you, not made by somebody else."
I frowned. "What?" Greg had said something about that too.
"That's what everybody thinks. That you've got some sort of Tinker support who made you your armor, and that's why you took those parts from Squealer. But it's all you, isn't it?"
"Yeah?" I shrugged, and then shifted back to what I considered my (new) normal appearance, along with my armor.
She cocked her head. "Why do you go out like that, with the armor and stuff? Why not just be all silvery?"
I shifted a little on the edge of the building. "It just feels right? This is what I was like… before."
Her mouth formed a silent 'o'. She looked down at the artificial spinal column in her hands, and then held it out to me. "Uh, here. You can have your… spine back."
I took it from her wordlessly, lifting it over my shoulder and absorbing it into my back, immediately starting to work on it again.
"I was serious, I won't tell anybody, I swear. I was just really confused, and it was like I needed to know."
I sighed. "Yeah. I get it." I fell backwards, lying down on the rooftop with my legs dangling over the edge, staring up at the clouds.
I… I wanted to talk about it. She was the first person to (almost) know what I was, and as much as I might want to deny it, it was kind of nice having someone who knew, and I didn't need to hide from.
Not that keeping my true nature a secret was my only problem right now…
And just like that, my thoughts swarmed back to Emma.
Goddammit.
Ugh.
I was avoiding thinking about it. About her. About what I had learned yesterday, what it meant, and what the fuck to do with it.
Because Emma.
Fucking Emma.
Why couldn't she have just told me?
The worst part was I felt like it was my fault. Irrational, but emotions don't have to make any fucking sense.
It's just… if I'd only kept my mouth shut. If I only hadn't said anything about her hair that day. If I only hadn't reminded her in the worst way possible of what had happened, then none of this would have happened.
She'd been so close, so fucking close to reaching out, standing on her front steps that day. Eyes showing indecision, almost pleading, her mouth open to speak.
And I just had to go and completely fucking ruin it.
Everything could have been so different. The past two years wouldn't have been anything like they had been.
Except… they had.
I didn't know how to feel about that. My previously tangled feelings about all of this, about her, were only made more complex.
Concern, and anger. Understanding, and disgust. Heartbreak, and pity. Love, and hate.
Because I did. I hated her. It was just becoming harder to hold onto that, as it got muddled by the revelations I'd had and instead turned into apathy and pity.
I did still feel something for her. Seven years of being as close as sisters, half my life at that point, was not something easily discarded, as much as I would have preferred that with the way she'd twisted and used that against me.
The things she'd done, the things she'd said… they weren't the sort of thing you could take back. Weren't the sort of things you could forgive and forget.
And to be honest, as much as I missed my sister, I knew what we'd had was gone, destroyed by her as she excised me from her life just as she intended, and that'd never be back.
And yet… only two days ago, I'd told her that family never gave up on each other, because that's what being family meant.
But what was I supposed to do?
That was where I was lost, and I had a feeling I wasn't going to be figuring it out on my own anytime soon.
I couldn't tell Dad, because that would require telling him everything else, and no thank you. The only other person I could think of was Brianna, but I didn't even really know her, and she'd immediately know who I was talking about if I asked her for advice.
I needed someone who didn't have any feelings about it, someone like–
I stilled, and then turned to look at the younger girl sitting to my left.
You know what? Fuck it. Just, fuck it. Why not?
"Hey, can I ask you something?" I asked, folding my arms behind my head.
Vista looked over at me. "What is it?"
"Alright, say you have a friend, right?" Vista nodded slowly, clearly not understanding where I was going with this. "And you're so close, you're practically sisters. But then suddenly, one day, she breaks it off for no apparent reason, won't talk to you, nothing. Instead, she starts doing everything she can to make your life hell. It goes on long enough and gets so bad that you hate her, except something's always felt off about it. And then suddenly, you find out she's been acting like that because something really bad happened to her, seriously hurt her and fucked her up."
"Like a trigger event?" she asked.
I thought about it for a moment. "Yeah. That bad. She doesn't know you know, though. She's still really messed up, and even if you hate her, you still care too. What would you do?"
"Probably confront her? Tell her you know what happened and that what she's been doing isn't okay and she needs to stop. Maybe tell her parents and try to get her in therapy or something?" Vista shrugged. "Let her make the next move and decide where to go from there."
I sighed. Yeah, I figured it would be something like that. I'd just hoped Vista might have something better.
"I'd do it as soon as possible, too," she said, looking at me with a slightly pointed tone in her voice like she knew this wasn't just hypothetical.
It was probably obvious it wasn't, but whatever.
Vista stood, brushing off her skirt, and I sat up. "Well, it was nice talking to you, Relentless, but I need to get going," she spoke, smiling slightly and holding out her hand, and I stood so I could shake it.
"Yeah, sure," I returned. Vista hadn't been anything like what I'd expected for a thirteen year-old. Hell, she seemed more mature than half the people in my grade at Winslow.
"I'll see you around, then," she said, taking a step forward off the roof, her foot landing on not air, but solid cement that I realized was the roof of the building across the street to our left. The building that was two stories taller than the one I was on.
I couldn't help but be mildly awed whenever she did something like that. It was just… crazy.
The roof she was on suddenly snapped back to its proper location, and in less than ten seconds she was gone, even beyond the range of my vision.
Her power really was insane.
Once she disappeared, I slumped. It was only 4:24PM, leaving me with a surplus of time. Combined with Vista's words, I really had no excuse at this point.
"I'd do it as soon as possible."
Fuck.
I knew she was right, though. I didn't want to deal with this at school, where Emma would have her friends backing her up, but also forcing her to keep acting the way they expected. I needed to deal with her alone. And the only way I could really do that was by visiting the Barnes' myself.
…This was not going to be fun.
I traveled slower than I had to, much slower than I really could, dragging out the time.
Unfortunately, that still meant it was only fifty minutes before I reached the Barnes' house in the better-off southern part of the city, reverting to my normal appearance a few blocks away.
God, when was the last time I had been here? Was it really nineteen months?
Taking a deep breath, I walked up the steps and then reached the porch, hesitating for a moment before pushing the doorbell.
([Emotion emulation processes reduced to 83%])
I shuffled uncomfortably on the doormat, stopping when I heard footsteps a few moments later. The sound of the deadbolt sliding open only raised my anxiety, but I steeled myself. I could do this.
The white door opened, revealing a woman that looked like an older, slightly shorter version of Emma.
"Taylor!" Zoe said, stepping back and gesturing for me to come inside. "Come in, come in!" I moved through the doorway, looking around as she closed the door behind me and reset the deadbolt. Immediately after I was drawn into a hug, the woman holding it for a few seconds before stepping away. "It's been too long! How are you? You've gotten so tall!"
I smiled, unable to keep myself from getting caught up in her enthusiasm. "Hi Zoe. I'm doing alright." Which, strangely enough, was actually true. "How are you?"
"Oh, I'm doing just fine. Nothing too exciting. Just the usual, you know how it is," she said. "Are you here to see Emma?"
I nodded hesitantly.
"Alright, hold on." She turned towards the stairs, calling up to the second floor in what I knew was the direction of Emma's room. "Emma!"
A loud "What?" was returned.
"Taylor's here!"
Dead silence, and then the sound of a door hurriedly pulled open and a rush towards the railing by the stairs. Emma appeared after a few seconds, tensing as soon as she saw me.
"What."
([Emotion emulation processes reduced to 66%])
"Hey, Emma."
Her expressions shifted so fast I couldn't accurately place them, eventually landing on a blank mask.
Fast, but not too, fast, and still tense, she descended the stairs towards me. "What is it?"
To the average person, and maybe to Zoe, Emma sounded calm, collected. However there was an almost imperceptible frostiness to her voice, and years of being around her made it easy to recognize.
I shrugged. "Just here to talk, catch up, you know."
Emma's eyes flicked over to her mother, even as she stood on the second to last step, making me look up to her.
I had no doubt that was intentional.
I could tell she wasn't comfortable interacting with me in front of her mother, likely because suddenly there were two personas, two attitudes she normally kept separate clashing together. Acting hostile to me would only raise questions from Zoe.
Emma smiled at me suddenly. "Of course, Taylor! Come on," she said, grabbing my hand and almost pulling me upstairs. She was gripping my hand like she was trying to squeeze the life out of it, and it probably would have hurt …except there wasn't really anything she could do that could hurt me.
I followed easily, my longer legs letting me keep up with her faster pace as she dragged me down the hall and into her room, dropping my hand as soon as the door was closed.
"What the fuck do you think you're doing here, Taylor?"
([Emotion emulation processes reduced to 31%])
"I just want to talk," I told her calmly.
"Fuck you, Taylor. Get out of my house," she snarled.
"I want you to stop being such a bitch to me at school."
She snorted. "How about… no?"
([Emotion emulation processes reduced to 26%])
"Can you seriously not stop, for one minute?" I asked. "You don't have to act here, Emma. There's nobody watching you, nobody you have to prove anything to. It's just you and me."
She sneered. "You think I'm acting? Wow, Taylor, I didn't know you were delusional too. Maybe I should tell your dad so they can take you off and put you with all the other crazies where you belong. I'm sure you'd all get along great."
([Emotion emulation processes reduced to 17%])
I sighed, rubbing my temples. It didn't do anything for me, but it was still something to do as I collected my thoughts. "Why didn't you just tell me, Emma?"
"What the fuck are you talking about, Taylor?" she said, staring at me coldly.
"Do you know how worried I was? The phone call just dropped, and I had no idea what was happening. I tried calling you back three times, and they went straight to voicemail."
She was staring at me, not moving, but I could see that her face had lost a little of its color.
"I called the house phone here whenever I got the chance, but Zoe kept saying you didn't want to talk, and she didn't know why. I was really worried by then," I said. "Can you imagine it? Your best friend's phone stops working mid-call, and then she won't talk to you for the next two weeks?"
She tried to sneer, but didn't really manage it. "I was just cutting you off like I'd wanted to do since before your mom bit it."
I shook my head. "That's bullshit, Emma, and you and I both know it. You don't drop a friendship mid-call. You were always the better liar, but there's no way you faked being my friend for over a year after Mom. I may have believed you on the steps a year and a half ago, but I was emotional and confused, and I've had a long time to think about it."
She opened her mouth, but I didn't let her say anything. "You were going to tell me. You were going to reach out, and then I said that stupid comment about your hair and you shut down."
"You actually believe that Taylor?" she asked scathingly, though she had crossed her arms in front of her and was leaning back on her heel defensively. "You really are crazy."
"Sophia told me."
And just like that, her remaining composure shattered. "W-what?"
"Sophia told me what happened to you in that alley–"
"No," she whispered, her face bone-white. "She didn't. You can't."
I sighed, leaning back against the door. "Emma…"
She started looking panicked. "No!"
"Emma, calm down."
"NO! I'm not weak, you are. I'm not like you, I'm not," she said vehemently, and it seemed more like she was trying to convince herself than me.
([Emotion emulation processes reduced to 5%])
"So you need me to prove that? Bullying someone doesn't mean you're strong, Emma. It just means that you're insecure and need other people to hold up your self-worth. Do you know why I never fought back?" I asked.
She shook her head mechanically, like she was only doing it because she'd been prompted, but she hadn't actually thought about it.
"Because I cared, Emma. Because every time I looked at you, I saw my sister. And no matter how much you hurt me, I wasn't going to sink to your level and do the same to you, because nobody deserves that," I said.
Her face was still blank, void of anything, and I could only hope that I was getting through to her.
I sighed, looking at my hands. My hands that could crush metal like tissue paper, made out of super-configurable nanomachines. I would have been extremely tempted to use every advantage I had, had I gone against the trio, but using my abilities for that just felt wrong.
"And then… and then you pulled that stunt with the locker." I looked back up at her. "You made me helpless, deliberately made me as terrified as possible, so that you could feel like you had power over me. It's just… ironic, that you've ended up becoming the same sort of person that hurt you."
It was that that finally got a reaction out of her. She started shaking, her body tense and eyes wide. "No…"
I pushed myself upright, and she took a step back. "It's funny. The Emma I knew? Before all of this? The one who reached out and talked about things, who relied on other people and asked for help? She was strong."
I left the "and the person you've turned into isn't" unsaid.
Emma flinched like she'd been burned.
"If you want to stay like that, just keep away from me. It'll be better for both of us. Otherwise, you know where I am," I told her, looking over my shoulder as I stepped out of her room, still not entirely sure what Emma's thoughts were and only hoping that I'd gotten through.
The ball's in your court, now.
I walked down the stairs slowly, and saw Zoe sitting at the counter of the kitchen down the hall from the entrance atrium-y area, drinking what appeared to be iced tea. She looked over at me as I reached the first floor, and as much as I would have liked to just leave at that point, I knew I couldn't do that.
"You two alright?" she asked. "I was disappointed when you and Emma stopped seeing each other. You were a good influence on her."
I grimaced. "Not… really. It was all her. I… she just… changed and left me behind. She never told me why. I came back from camp, and she was acting all weird, and I had no idea what had happened. She just stopped talking to me. And I only found out what happened to her yesterday."
Zoe sighed, but nodded. "She wasn't talking to anyone, didn't say anything for weeks. She's never really been same, and I think Anne being off at college hasn't helped any. I'd hoped you would help her, but it didn't happen that way, did it? I would've tried to get you two together if I'd known you were slipping apart. But before I knew it, you'd disappeared, and she refused to talk about you."
"She's… not doing well," I said, looking up.
Zoe frowned. "What do you mean?"
"Like…" I rubbed my left arm. Fuck this was awkward to say. "I think she should see a therapist."
"What?" Zoe asked sounding surprised. "Why?"
"I don't think she's gotten over it yet," I told her. "And, and it's still affecting her. I don't know if anybody else notices, but there's little things every so often. She probably still has nightmares?" She nodded hesitantly. "It's likely she has PTSD."
"Really?" she asked incredulously. "Isn't that only for soldiers?"
I shook my head. "It can happen to anybody who experiences something traumatic."
Zoe looked thoughtful.
"I mean, it's just a thought," I added.
She took a sip of her tea before exhaling. "No, I understand. We suggested she go before, but she didn't do anything. And I know you're only saying this because it's obvious you still care about her, I mean, you grew up with Emma for seven years, joined at the hip. You were practically another daughter to me. …So I know I can trust you with this." I winced to myself. A few months ago, before the incident, that may have not been true with how emotional I was about everything surrounding Emma. "And… it's true. She hasn't been the same since that day. I want my daughter back. I want to see her smile and laugh again." She looked over at me. "Do you really think talking about it with some therapist would help?" she asked.
I shrugged. "I don't know. But isn't it at least worth trying?"
She finished off her tea and then nodded. "I'll talk to Alan about it. Thank you, Taylor."
I smiled slightly. "Yeah, of course."
I finished my spine only a couple hours after leaving the Barnes' house, and began moving on to the rest of my pseudo-endoskeleton. It wouldn't exactly look like a human skeleton, but that was intentional. Evolution may be good, but a quantum supercomputer as powerful as I was running simulations for days to achieve exactly what I wanted was better. And evolution never had access to the sorts of materials I was playing with.
My skeletal analogue would be finished by the end of the next day, helped by the fact that I'd gotten another six bags of charcoal. I'd needed to swing by the Boat Graveyard and pick up enough nanomaterial to make a wagon so that I wouldn't get any suspicious looks carrying the bags home myself, though. I was home by seven, and got dinner together for Dad and I, doing homework afterwards.
I checked a couple things online before going to bed, and was surprised to find out I'd missed a fight between Kaiser, Rune, Fenja, and Menja against Dauntless, Miss Militia, and Velocity while I'd been at Emma's house.
Probably for the best, considering my last interaction with the Protectorate.
The day had been pretty amazing in retrospect, meeting Brianna, talking to Vista, dealing with the Emma situation, making my skeleton.
If only I'd known what the rest of the week would hold.
A/N: IT'S OVER NIIIINE THOUUSSAAAAANDDDDD.
Hysterical teenage girls are not fun. I was one once. Woooo family life.
(also random F/GO reference that I didn't even realize until two days after writing that part)
I have to thank @Twei and @Baughn for their comments and suggestions, and Mazotori for being such a fantastic editor, who without which this would not turn out nearly as polished as it does.
Diatonic 1.5
Tuesday, April 12, 2011
I don't have problems falling asleep anymore. If I want to I just do. Like pressing a power button. Boop. Sleep mode.
I suppose that makes me lucky.
It means I'm not kept awake by errant thoughts or an overactive imagination. Worries about the next day or things that I've done or failed to do don't haunt my waking hours, like they might for other people.
Because I'm not other people.
Because… I'm not human.
Or did simply having these thoughts, these doubts, realizing that those problems are something I don't have anymore, make me all the more human despite myself? Despite the fact that I… I'm not?
Not flesh and blood, not even having something close to resembling a human brain, instead simply a collection of synergistic programs, intertwined and entangled to provide the most complex and accurate facsimile of a human mind without being the actual thing.
A fake. An imitation.
Did… did I even have a soul?
I didn't know.
And I wasn't sure I wanted to know.
Wednesday, April 13, 2011
School the next day was weird, for a number of reasons. The first being that the first time I saw Emma, it looked like all she wanted was to storm over and tear me a new one, but Sophia grabbed her arm and whispered something to her, all while keeping her eyes locked on mine.
Emma's eyes hardened as she continued glaring at me, but when Sophia let go of her arm, she made no move to come over to me, instead just sniffing and turning away.
And from there the day only got stranger.
"What's that?"
"Huh, what?" Greg said, hurriedly closing his notebook and crossing his arms over it.
Good god, could you be any more obvious?
It was third period, Gladly, and we hadn't started class yet as the man fumbled trying to get his slideshow for the day working, so instead people were talking and doing whatever.
I ran over the flicker of memory for a second, my check only confirming what I thought I'd seen.
"You… draw?" I asked incredulously. He flushed.
"Ah… er, what are you talking about?"
I just leveled an unblinking stare at him.
It really helped that I didn't actually need to blink.
Greg fidgeted uncomfortably, and then looked away, down at the notebook under his arms. "Ah, um, yeah, I guess. Maybe, you know."
"People?" The thing I'd seen him working on looked like a profile of some sort.
"Designs," he corrected, and then flushed further. "I mean, nothing important. Just uh, sketches."
They hadn't looked like sketches, actually they'd looked pretty professional.
His evasiveness was only further piquing my curiosity.
"Can I see?"
His eyes widened. "I, erm, I guess? Sure?" he said hesitantly. "It's nothing, really, just like, stuff." He shifted the notebook around, and then almost warily handed it over.
I took it from him, and then opened the front cover. The first page held a near-perfect replica of Eidolon in costume. Side profiles, angles, everything. There were sketches, some in pencil, others inked, some incomplete, others even colored in what had to be marker –though it was different from any marker I'd seen–
And it wasn't just Eidolon's usual costume, the next page held more, alternatives with different cuts, pieces, but all retaining that iconic green, shaded in and giving a sense of depth.
I moved on to the next page, but instead of Eidolon there was Alexandria. Her standard costume, and then a number of different ones, some hard armor, others soft, but all keeping the lighthouse and her black and steel-grey color palette.
Moving through the sketchbook, it was the same for a number of capes, some I recognized: Legend, Hero, Armsmaster, Miss Militia, Vista, Faultline, Triumph, Dragon, Shadow Stalker, Gallant, but there were also others I didn't. Sometimes there were even three or four pages dedicated to a single person, notably Armsmaster and Faultline. And Armsmaster's alternate costumes were intricate, areas magnified to show how sections of the armor meshed and interlocked.
Dragon's… were totally unexpected. Instead of the dragon armor, it was tight suits that made her look… robotic, but human. A segmented section over her spine, and armor that lay over itself in parts like scales. It reminded me a little of Kid Win's armor, or that one Aleph character that he'd based it on… Iron Man, but deep purple, practically black, and more dragon-y.
And then, as I flipped to the next page, moving on from some cape named Atlas, I froze in shock.
It was me. Well, not Taylor Hebert me, Relentless me.
It was my armor, but not. I assumed that was because there were no pictures of me out yet, just a description of my costume. It still had the steel plates, but… different, more refined, professional.
"She's a really new cape," Greg suddenly said, and I looked over at him. "But it's super rare that you get a girl in armor like that. The whole black-knight theme, I mean. The last one was Galahad in Sacramento. She's"–he nodded at the page, indicating he was talking about me– "got some sort of super-strength –I mean, she choked out Lung– and this force-field that does kinetic manipulation. And yesterday they got some pictures of these really awesome symbol things that show up all over her when she gets serious, like she's going into overdrive or something."
They got pictures of my fight from Squealer yesterday? How?
I went over the fight in my head, looking at every angle, and then groaned internally. Traffic cameras. And what looked to be a security camera on a corner-store a couple doors down from where we'd been fighting.
Greg flipped to the next page and pointed at the notebook, and I saw there were really well-done sketches of my sigils. Not all of them, only what I assumed was visible from the angles they'd gotten the pictures, but there was still that iconic symbol I'd carved into my chestpiece.
Fog.
I flipped to the next page.
And then froze.
The alternate costumes were different. More different than any of the other alternates I'd seen for the other capes. Instead of my plate-armor, it was a number of form-fitting super high-tech suits. Some were pitch-black, others had silver parts, and some of the black ones even had characteristic white lines and accents that I could tell based on the shading were glowing, matching my sigils.
They were like the Dragon designs I'd seen, but less cybernetic and plated scale, more hard armor.
"I tried to do the medieval theme a couple times, but it just didn't feel right, with the amount of black that dominates her costume, and the fact that they're saying her armor is tinkertech anyways… well, I just went in that direction."
Wait… what? Why do they think that?
"–And there was this really awesome Earth-Aleph movie last year that had these cool black helmets with these hard-cut lines and geometry that seemed to fit perfectly, so I used that as inspiration in this one," he said, pointing at the one I'd been looking at.
They were… beautiful.
On the page after there was a body armor design that was like a meld between Dragon's and the alternates I'd seen so far, with flexible-looking undersuit and black armor panels in the areas that my normal armor had, plus a bunch of extra places, like a complex line of chevrons starting at my neck and ending at my lower back as armor over my spine.
"These are… really good, Greg."
And I wasn't just saying that. Who knew someone like Greg, one of the most socially awkward and introverted people I knew, could do something like this?
"A-ah, um, thanks? It's just a hobby. I started it doing character designs for the DnD group I'm a part of, and then I started doing capes just 'cause, y'know?" I looked over at him.
"Do you put these on PHO?"
"Oh, um. No?" he said timidly.
"You seriously should," I told him. "I think people would really like them."
"You think?"
I nodded. "Really."
"Oh. Um, maybe I'll do that, then. If you really think people would like them…" he replied.
"Alright, time to get started!" Gladly called from the front of the room, forcing me to reluctantly close the sketchbook and hand it back over.
Greg's designs made my current armor feel almost… inadequate, having seen what I could have instead, the sorts of things I could do. My plate armor had been a design of necessity, because there was only so much you could do when working steel by hand –literally– and I'd spent a good section of my budget on the undersuit and fastening parts for the plates.
…Only to find out it was totally pointless the day after I used it the first time.
But the point was, with what I'd had I thought I'd done pretty well. Now, though, I could do almost anything, just like my clothes, and I'd seen just how far that could go in those drawings.
I sighed, forcing myself to stop thinking about it and focus on class, even if it was Gladly.
With Madison, Sophia, and Emma not bothering me today, I felt confident enough to abandon my lunch spot in the bathroom and venture up to the secluded rooftop of Winslow.
It was open to students normally, with rusting benches in places and a tall, seven-foot wire fence at the edge of the building. I sat on one, staring out on the neglected grounds and simply enjoying the warm mid-April breeze as I kept running my simulations. I'd mostly finished my big project, and now was focusing more on figuring out what to do with my body. I was pretty much done and ready for testing out my first configuration, but knew that I'd have to probably go through a bunch of revisions before I finally got what I wanted.
Releasing a huff of air, I started cannibalizing my internal nanomachines, ripping apart the molecules into their constituent materials, and then beginning to process of constructing my skeleton atom by atom.
It was gonna take a while.
"Hi."
I jumped at the sudden intrusion on my thoughts, turning to look at the source of the voice.
A medium-height girl with strawberry-blonde hair sat a foot and a half to my right on my bench, looking at me.
"Hello?" I replied hesitantly. Why was she talking to me?
"Nice weather, isn't it?" she said, closing her eyes contentedly and leaning into breeze.
"Yes?" I agreed. "…Um, who are you? …And why are you here?"
She turned back to me and opened her eyes –very blue eyes, I noted–, giving me a wide disarming smile. "I'm Brianna!" she said, holding out her hand.
I stared at her for a moment, and then looked down at her hand, slowly moving my own forward and grasping hers, shaking it.
Social ritual complete, she drew back, continuing to smile at me. "I just wanted to see if you were doing okay. You know, with those bitches bothering you again."
I blinked and stared at her.
Whaaaa…?
The way she casually cursed was completely at odds with her bright voice. Was she talking about the trio?
"Um… yeah? I guess so?"
"That's good," she said, putting her hands on the edge of the bench and leaning on them. "I thought they were leaving you alone, but then they started pulling that stupid stuff again this week."
I eyed her. "Why are you talking to me?"
Her smile dropped a bit. "I just wanted to. And I wanted to say I'm sorry I haven't before now. I felt really bad when they were doing all that stuff last semester, but I …couldn't," she said, sounding a bit apologetic. "But then I saw you sitting here, and it was perfect timing."
"Okay…"
I wasn't quite sure how to feel about that.
"Anyways, I was wondering you wanted to hang out sometime or something? My friends and I are going to the mall this weekend, if you want to come with," she said. "It's not like it's a big deal or anything."
I hadn't been to the mall since Mom died and Emma…
And this was the first time someone had talked to me for no reason since last school year, practically.
What the hell. Why not.
"Sure, I guess," I replied.
"Great!" She reached down, unzipping her backpack and taking out a notebook and a pen, flipping through the pages to find a blank one before writing down something and tearing out the page. She folded it up until it was a smaller rectangle, and then held it out to me. "Here's my number. What's yours?"
I froze, the piece of paper in my hands.
Technically, I didn't have a cellphone. Except…
Maybe I could? I mean, I got internet, right? Could I do the same with cell networks?
Yes, the answer came instantly.
Huh. So all I needed was a number, and I didn't even really need that.
I needed to be careful, though. Choose a number that didn't exist. Maybe just make something up? But what if I gave her a number that somebody already had? Then again, the chances of giving her an already-used central office code for our state was like fifteen in nine hundred. So I randomly generated a suitable seven digit number, resolving to check later and make sure that the CO code wasn't already used. If it was I'd just give some excuse that I got a new phone or something.
Satisfied, I rattled off the number, which Brianna wrote down in a different notebook. "I'll text you after school, 'kay?"
I nodded.
The bell suddenly rang, and Brianna looked up at the sound, before bending back over and packing her stuff away. "It was nice talking to you!" she said, smiling once she was done.
I nodded, still a bit off-balance from the entire interaction.
Brianna swung her bag up onto her shoulder and began heading towards the door to the rooftop. "See you later!" she called, looking over her shoulder and waving.
I just smiled and waved back, unsure of what else to do.
And then I was left on the roof, struggling to understand what the hell had just happened and what it meant.
Unfortunately no answers presented themselves, and I went through the rest of the day practically in a daze, between dealing with and repeatedly going over my introduction to Brianna and constructing my skeleton.
So. Much. Carbon.
…I was probably going to have to go out and buy a couple bags of charcoal to eat.
Don't look at me like that.
I seriously needed the stuff. Unlike you squishy water-based humans, I was planning on being at least seventy percent carbon, and my nanomachines were mostly exotic materials and metals. Carbon was in limited quantity and I needed more, and nuclear synthesis could only get me so far.
Thankfully, using carbon also meant that my weight shouldn't change all that much, so I wouldn't be falling through the floor or squashing any chairs just by sitting on them anytime soon. I'd be able to compensate using the nanomaterial I retained, anyways.
I only had part of my spinal structure done so far, but it was progress. The tests I was continuously putting it through as I constructed it were doing well, but then again that was to be expected after having simulated it down to an atomic level and running those same tests virtually.
I'd successfully avoided thinking about Emma and what to do about her throughout the entire day …though I didn't know whether to consider that an accomplishment or not.
Once school was over and we were finally released, I was itching to go out again in my armor, but my desire to continue working on my skeleton and to check on the nanomaterial in the Boat Graveyard won over, so instead I headed towards the Docks.
I knew there was a hardware store relatively close to the route I was taking, so I angled towards it and spent fifteen dollars on a pair of seventeen pound bags of briquettes. The checkout guy looked at me dubiously before asking if I needed any help with them, and I laughed to myself as I told him I was stronger than I looked and could handle it.
I happily walked off with my newly acquired raw material, eventually entering an alley, adjusting my body, and manifesting my armor once I'd gotten close to where I wanted to be. I made my way up to the roof with panels of my Armor, and then continued on my journey to the edge of the Docks.
Rather than actually going into the Graveyard itself, I instead stopped on the last building before the Bay, sitting down on the edge and tearing open one of the bags before realizing my mask was in the way.
…Okay, yeah, I could have just absorbed the stuff into my body like a giant amoeba, but as I've said repeatedly, it was the little things that kept me sane and grounded, and eating using my mouth was definitely one of those things.
So I simply reabsorbed the bottom half of my silvery mask and began munching on my snack.
Please don't ask me what it tasted like. I don't think I can accurately describe it in a way that humans can comprehend. Nonetheless, it was carbon. With some extra stuff, but that just gave it flavor.
I checked over my nanomaterial as I ate, satisfied with the progress it was making in replicating. Only another twenty four hours and it would be enough for my first project.
Of course, that didn't mean I would be stopping anytime soon. The ship I was chewing through at that moment was more than double the mass of my project, and I fully intended to convert the entire thing to nanomaterial. As well as all the other ships in the Graveyard.
Once I hit fifty tons of nanomaterial was when the conversion would really start to take off. Doubling that every five hours… I could have the Graveyard done in under a week.
And oh, how I wanted that.
I wanted my engines. My hull. It was an almost all-consuming need I had. I was Fog, and I felt incomplete as I was.
Soon. Soon.
I sighed, pushing aside the desires I couldn't fulfill and focusing on the fusion generator in the rear of the ship I'd left it on, thirty meters out in the bay. My antimatter setup was working nicely, as inefficient as it was.
Oh well, beggars can't be choosers.
I should have enough by the next day for at least testing my project, but I wouldn't stop it anytime soon, the more I had the better, and there was no telling how long that tinkertech generator would last.
I licked my fingers as I finished off the second bag of charcoal, putting them aside to throw away later. My spine was coming along nicely, almost done by that point, and I paid close attention to all of the segments that functioned as vertebrae, making sure they had full mobility.
I kind of wanted to try out some of the alternate armor I'd seen in Greg's notebook, but I knew that wouldn't be very smart, since he'd recognize it immediately if pictures got out and then wonder how the new cape he'd been drawing had one of his own designs when only one person had really gotten a good look at it.
Yeaaaaaah. I didn't want Greg figuring out my identity, thank you.
Well, maybe he'd actually post them on PHO, and then I'd have a perfectly good reason for changing my outfit to match.
250-XXXX: Hi Taylor!
I blinked. So that's how text messaging worked inside your own head.
Hi, I sent back, figuring that was the best response.
What r u up to?
Not much. Just hanging out right now. And you know, eating the Ship Graveyard after a light snack of charcoal.
Cool. Sat 10am @ Middleview work?
I didn't really have anything else going on, so… Yeah, sure.
Alright :) came back, and then immediately after. Sorry, gtg, have work. Ttyl!
It was… weird having someone actually invite me to something. It hadn't happened since before high school. Before Emma. But it was kind of nic–
"Hey."
I jumped. Again. God fucking damn, what the hell!? Seriously? That's the third time this week!
Why was I having so much trouble being aware of my surroundings?
I turned to look at the girl sitting next to me on my left, though I already knew who it was from her voice.
"…" I just stared at Vista, before finally getting a hold of my voice. "Hi?"
I looked around for the second Ward that she was with, though I couldn't see anybody. "Where's your partner?"
"No partner. It's just me today," Vista replied, looking in my direction.
"I thought Wards patrolled in pairs?" I asked, slightly confused. That's what all the stuff I'd read online said.
"What, I'm not good enough to be on my own?" she asked, irritation creeping into her voice. "Or is it because I'm too young? Because I'm not old enough?"
Ooookay then. Don't question Vista's capabilities. Clearly a touchy subject.
"No, no, I just thought… you know…" I scrambled to recover. "I didn't expect to see you alone."
"Well, you thought wrong," she huffed, annoyance still present.
"Sorry," I apologized, though I wasn't quite sure for what. It just seemed like the right thing say.
She nodded.
Vista was quiet for a minute before she spoke. "I'm not technically on duty or patrolling, so no 'buddy'," she said, making air-quotes with her fingers. "I'm just getting away for a bit."
I nodded slowly, turning to look out at the bay and the sunlight coming from behind us sparkling on the water.
"You fought Squealer yesterday?"
"Mhm," I confirmed.
"They brought in that giant van-tank thing, there was some pretty serious damage to it," she commented.
"Yep."
Vista turned to me. "They upped your ratings. Again."
I paused, and then slowly turned to her. "What?"
She nodded, turning to look out at the bay. "Brute six, now. And Shaker four, Mover four, Blaster two."
I almost snorted. Blaster two? Wait until they saw my cannons, and then we'd see who was Blaster two.
"They really want you on the Protectorate. Miss Militia's been telling Armsmaster that they need a good versatile heavy hitter-slash-defender and you're practically perfect."
"Yeah, thanks but no thanks," I said. I was only more sure of my decision now. After finding out what I could really do with my nanomaterial, and the high possibility that would be restricted if I joined something like the Protectorate, I was all the more protective of my autonomy. Not to mention the thought of being under somebody else's command and having to follow orders really rubbed me the wrong way. "…Is that why you're talking to me?"
"No." She hesitated. "Okay, maybe a little bit. Armsmaster did tell Kid Win and I to talk to you if we ever saw you again, try and improve relations and all that shit. But I couldn't care less about that."
"So what then?" I pressed. There was no way she wasn't here for a reason.
Vista shifted uncomfortably before taking a deep breath. "You aren't human, are you?"
I froze. And not just metaphorically, no, I froze. All of my nanomachines, everywhere, halted.
Fuck. Fuckfuckfuckfuck.
What did she want? How did she know? How had she figured it out? Was she going to tell everyone?
"I've got this sort of… sense, of where I can push and pull," she said, holding her hands out in front of her, and I vaguely noticed that the distance between them was changing even without her moving them. "I know where I can stretch and twist and compress everything. But I can't do it to anything living, and people are these sort of sticky areas that stop it." She looked back at me. "But you…"
And suddenly my left arm was ten sizes smaller.
Everything felt wrong and disorienting and my nanomachines were giving me garbage feedback and it was all I could do to keep them exactly how they were–
Just as quickly, something shifted, and things made sense, I had control again, but my arm was still way too small.
"What the fuck!?" I screamed. "Stop that! Let go!"
My arm was instantly back, proper sized, looking like nothing had ever happened to it.
I breathed heavily, glaring at Vista, though she wouldn't be able to see it behind my mask. She still seemed to get the message.
"Sorry! I didn't know it would be like that, I was just trying to show you what I meant!" she rushed out.
"Don't ever do that again," I growled menacingly, my sigils flaring up all over my body and my fists clenched tightly. My Wave-Force Armor surrounded us, trapping us in a sphere of white panels.
Vista nodded immediately. "Okay, okay, shit. Sorry."
I kept glaring, but allowed my combat systems to go dormant again and forced my hands to relax, my Armor fading away.
"Fuck," she cursed, breathing slowly, like she was trying to regulate herself. "Sorry. I didn't know it would be like that."
"What do you want?" I ground out. Was she going to blackmail me or something?
"What?" she asked, sounding surprised.
"What do you want from me?" I repeated.
"I… What? I'm just curious. You're different. The first person who I could ever do that to. Are you some sort of special Case 53 or something? Is that why you wear a full-body suit?" She glanced at my gloved hands. "Your hands look normal, though." she noted, sounding confused.
I didn't say anything.
She huffed. "Shit, okay. Look. Just, can you tell me if I'm right or not?"
I remained mute.
The portion of her face I could see flickered with annoyance, and she turned away from me to face the bay.
The silence remained for eight minutes, before she finally spoke up. "I don't like the Wards," she said softly. "That's why I'm on my own."
What?
"Not the others, the people, I mean like… the organization," she clarified, waving her hand in a vague manner. "We don't do shit normally."
Her hand went down.
"They send us on routes that are low-risk but high-visibility. We do PR events, smile and talk about how great it is. But we never actually fight unless there's like two Protectorate babysitters and it's practically guaranteed that we'll win. And the Youth Guard tries to limit even that. We're only allowed a certain number of hours, and the Protectorate basically tells us exactly how to act."
"I mean… isn't that their job? To provide oversight and make sure you're safe?"
"Yeah, but I'm thirteen! I've been a Ward for over two and a half years. You know how many times I've actually fought? Seven. Seven. Not that I even really got to do anything. They treat me like I'm made of fucking glass because I'm the youngest and a girl, even though I've been on the team longer than everybody else!"
Okay, I could see how that could be… frustrating. I mean, I'd had three fights in as many days, and my first week wasn't even over yet.
"So why are you, then?" I asked. "On the Wards, I mean."
She frowned and turned away again. "My parents," she said, and I could hear a tinge of irritation.
"Ah."
"Yeah, fucking 'ah'." She drew her legs up to her chest, hugging them. "That's why it's just me here. I can't fight, but at least I can use my powers without getting docked for it."
I could understand that. I was Relentless, but I couldn't do anything unless I was in my armor. If that were to be actively limited and restricted, I don't think I'd manage very well either.
"So what about you?" Vista asked, still staring out at the bay. "What are you?"
I was between a rock and a hard place. Tell Vista what I was –at least partly– and maintain control over the information, or risk her telling her superiors and it getting out with everybody jumping to the worst conclusion?
Plus, she'd just told me all of this stuff about herself when she didn't have to. And I got the sense that wasn't something she normally did.
"I swear I won't tell anyone if you don't want me to, I just… really want to know," she said. "Is it related to your powers? Are you a Case 53?"
"No, I'm…" I sighed, deciding that it showing was probably best, and it wouldn't give away everything, letting her draw her own conclusions. "Just… here."
And for the first time, I absorbed my armor and reverted all of my surface nanomachines' configurations to their base state, leaving me as an indistinct female figure of pure silver.
I could just tell Vista's eyes widened, even if I couldn't see them behind her visor. I don't even think she was fully aware as she reached out to touch my arm, running her fingers over the perfectly smooth surface.
"You're… beautiful."
I would have blushed if I had the capability. Thankfully, I didn't at that moment.
"You're like a girl Silver Surfer."
I didn't get the reference, but that was easily remedied by looking it up online. It was apparently some comic book character from the sixties and seventies, and there were also pictures from an Earth-Aleph movie six years ago. From what I could tell, it was a pretty accurate description of my current appearance.
Though turning silver wasn't even close to what I could really do.
…I decided to mess with Vista just a little, it was only fair after what she'd done with my arm.
It took less than a second to readjust and reconfigure my body, color blooming across my surface as I fluidly shifted, leaving me small, with thin arms and legs, green armor on my chest, a white skirt with wavy green lines, and a visor on my head.
"Holy fuck!" Vista yelled, moving backwards a few inches from me. "What the hell!?"
"What?" I asked her in her own voice, smirking at her.
"You-you're me!" she said, pointing at me.
"No, I'm me," I responded, still smirking.
"Oh my god." Apparently curiosity won over surprise, because she moved close to me again, and started poking me all over. "You feel so real!"
I swatted her finger away. "I am real."
"I didn't mean it like that, I meant…" she struggled before shuddering. "Can you please go back? That's really, really weird."
Deciding I'd achieved what I wanted, I grinned and I reverted back to the featureless silver form.
"So this is… you?" she asked.
I shrugged. "Pretty much."
"Are you a Case 53 or something?"
I shook my head. "No. I just triggered and became… this," I said, gesturing at my silver body, omitting telling her about the weird dream-like experience I'd had in the process.
"So you're really not alive. No wonder I don't have any problems with you."
I leveled a glare at her. "Screw you. I'm alive, thanks."
Am I really, though? A computer and nanomachines?
Vista frowned. "I didn't mean it like that, I mean, like, you're liquid metal or something right? That's what it felt like."
"Yeah, basically," I replied, sighing.
"Do you even need to eat? Drink?" she asked.
"I… can eat, but I don't need to," I told her, my focus wandering over to the charcoal bags a few feet behind where she sat.
Vista followed the change in my line of sight and swallowed. "You ate those?
"Yeah," I confirmed.
"How does that even work? No, what does that do?"
"It goes in my body like when you eat? I'm just more… aware of it."
"What? No, wait, why do you eat if you don't need to?"
"I can sort of mess with stuff once it's inside me," I told her, not giving away the fact that I wasn't exactly limited to my body. Better to keep that to myself so that if this did get out, people wouldn't see me as much of a threat. "Change it, shape it into other things… yeah." I shrugged.
"Things like what?"
Should I?
I mean, really, should I? I'd be giving a lot away with this. But, she'd trusted me, right? Couldn't I at least trust her? And it wasn't like it was anything super secret, considering she knew about my body.
…
What the fuck, in for a penny, in for a pound. Not to mention her reaction was probably going to be priceless.
I reached behind me, pushing my hand into my back and grasping the thing I'd been working on all day before pulling it out and around my body.
"Things like this," I said, holding my pseudo-spine in front of her, the structure swinging a bit from the sudden motion and the flexibility derived from the fully articulated joints between the segments. I was particularly proud of that.
Vista once again scrambled backwards a few inches. "What the fuck is that? Is that your spine!? Did you just pull your spine out of your back!!?"
"It's not my spine. Well, not yet at least," I told her. And then I tossed it at her.
I wasn't exactly worried about it. It was practically impossible to be harmed, so there was nothing to fear if she didn't catch it. However, she did out of reflex, struggling to get a hold on it from how easily it flexed and nearly slipped through her hands like a giant, wet noodle.
"It's… amazing," she said, holding it up and staring at it. Composed of geometric segments, the bottom half, which was completely done, was a dull dark silver with the same material as my union core coating the vertebrae. The upper half was less complete, and it showed in the highly reflective clear segments that threw light everywhere. "What's it made out of?"
"Diamond," I told her honestly.
Her head whipped up so fast I half expected to hear a crack. "What!?"
"It's diamond. Not completely solid, though, that would be really brittle. It's aggregated diamond nanorods held together in a matrix of nanotube and linear acetylenic carbon fibers, sealed in an spatially complex exotic metal," I explained. It felt good to show off a little about what I doing. I hadn't gotten the chance before, and it was so nice to just let go and not have to totally hide my capabilities.
"How much is this worth!?"
"It's literally priceless. …Maybe a couple billion or so if I had to give it a number?" I guessed. It was four or five pounds, so that felt right.
Vista just stared at me. "So you're a Tinker too? A-and your suit was actually you, not made by somebody else."
I frowned. "What?" Greg had said something about that too.
"That's what everybody thinks. That you've got some sort of Tinker support who made you your armor, and that's why you took those parts from Squealer. But it's all you, isn't it?"
"Yeah?" I shrugged, and then shifted back to what I considered my (new) normal appearance, along with my armor.
She cocked her head. "Why do you go out like that, with the armor and stuff? Why not just be all silvery?"
I shifted a little on the edge of the building. "It just feels right? This is what I was like… before."
Her mouth formed a silent 'o'. She looked down at the artificial spinal column in her hands, and then held it out to me. "Uh, here. You can have your… spine back."
I took it from her wordlessly, lifting it over my shoulder and absorbing it into my back, immediately starting to work on it again.
"I was serious, I won't tell anybody, I swear. I was just really confused, and it was like I needed to know."
I sighed. "Yeah. I get it." I fell backwards, lying down on the rooftop with my legs dangling over the edge, staring up at the clouds.
I… I wanted to talk about it. She was the first person to (almost) know what I was, and as much as I might want to deny it, it was kind of nice having someone who knew, and I didn't need to hide from.
Not that keeping my true nature a secret was my only problem right now…
And just like that, my thoughts swarmed back to Emma.
Goddammit.
Ugh.
I was avoiding thinking about it. About her. About what I had learned yesterday, what it meant, and what the fuck to do with it.
Because Emma.
Fucking Emma.
Why couldn't she have just told me?
The worst part was I felt like it was my fault. Irrational, but emotions don't have to make any fucking sense.
It's just… if I'd only kept my mouth shut. If I only hadn't said anything about her hair that day. If I only hadn't reminded her in the worst way possible of what had happened, then none of this would have happened.
She'd been so close, so fucking close to reaching out, standing on her front steps that day. Eyes showing indecision, almost pleading, her mouth open to speak.
And I just had to go and completely fucking ruin it.
Everything could have been so different. The past two years wouldn't have been anything like they had been.
Except… they had.
I didn't know how to feel about that. My previously tangled feelings about all of this, about her, were only made more complex.
Concern, and anger. Understanding, and disgust. Heartbreak, and pity. Love, and hate.
Because I did. I hated her. It was just becoming harder to hold onto that, as it got muddled by the revelations I'd had and instead turned into apathy and pity.
I did still feel something for her. Seven years of being as close as sisters, half my life at that point, was not something easily discarded, as much as I would have preferred that with the way she'd twisted and used that against me.
The things she'd done, the things she'd said… they weren't the sort of thing you could take back. Weren't the sort of things you could forgive and forget.
And to be honest, as much as I missed my sister, I knew what we'd had was gone, destroyed by her as she excised me from her life just as she intended, and that'd never be back.
And yet… only two days ago, I'd told her that family never gave up on each other, because that's what being family meant.
But what was I supposed to do?
That was where I was lost, and I had a feeling I wasn't going to be figuring it out on my own anytime soon.
I couldn't tell Dad, because that would require telling him everything else, and no thank you. The only other person I could think of was Brianna, but I didn't even really know her, and she'd immediately know who I was talking about if I asked her for advice.
I needed someone who didn't have any feelings about it, someone like–
I stilled, and then turned to look at the younger girl sitting to my left.
You know what? Fuck it. Just, fuck it. Why not?
"Hey, can I ask you something?" I asked, folding my arms behind my head.
Vista looked over at me. "What is it?"
"Alright, say you have a friend, right?" Vista nodded slowly, clearly not understanding where I was going with this. "And you're so close, you're practically sisters. But then suddenly, one day, she breaks it off for no apparent reason, won't talk to you, nothing. Instead, she starts doing everything she can to make your life hell. It goes on long enough and gets so bad that you hate her, except something's always felt off about it. And then suddenly, you find out she's been acting like that because something really bad happened to her, seriously hurt her and fucked her up."
"Like a trigger event?" she asked.
I thought about it for a moment. "Yeah. That bad. She doesn't know you know, though. She's still really messed up, and even if you hate her, you still care too. What would you do?"
"Probably confront her? Tell her you know what happened and that what she's been doing isn't okay and she needs to stop. Maybe tell her parents and try to get her in therapy or something?" Vista shrugged. "Let her make the next move and decide where to go from there."
I sighed. Yeah, I figured it would be something like that. I'd just hoped Vista might have something better.
"I'd do it as soon as possible, too," she said, looking at me with a slightly pointed tone in her voice like she knew this wasn't just hypothetical.
It was probably obvious it wasn't, but whatever.
Vista stood, brushing off her skirt, and I sat up. "Well, it was nice talking to you, Relentless, but I need to get going," she spoke, smiling slightly and holding out her hand, and I stood so I could shake it.
"Yeah, sure," I returned. Vista hadn't been anything like what I'd expected for a thirteen year-old. Hell, she seemed more mature than half the people in my grade at Winslow.
"I'll see you around, then," she said, taking a step forward off the roof, her foot landing on not air, but solid cement that I realized was the roof of the building across the street to our left. The building that was two stories taller than the one I was on.
I couldn't help but be mildly awed whenever she did something like that. It was just… crazy.
The roof she was on suddenly snapped back to its proper location, and in less than ten seconds she was gone, even beyond the range of my vision.
Her power really was insane.
Once she disappeared, I slumped. It was only 4:24PM, leaving me with a surplus of time. Combined with Vista's words, I really had no excuse at this point.
"I'd do it as soon as possible."
Fuck.
I knew she was right, though. I didn't want to deal with this at school, where Emma would have her friends backing her up, but also forcing her to keep acting the way they expected. I needed to deal with her alone. And the only way I could really do that was by visiting the Barnes' myself.
…This was not going to be fun.
I traveled slower than I had to, much slower than I really could, dragging out the time.
Unfortunately, that still meant it was only fifty minutes before I reached the Barnes' house in the better-off southern part of the city, reverting to my normal appearance a few blocks away.
God, when was the last time I had been here? Was it really nineteen months?
Taking a deep breath, I walked up the steps and then reached the porch, hesitating for a moment before pushing the doorbell.
([Emotion emulation processes reduced to 83%])
I shuffled uncomfortably on the doormat, stopping when I heard footsteps a few moments later. The sound of the deadbolt sliding open only raised my anxiety, but I steeled myself. I could do this.
The white door opened, revealing a woman that looked like an older, slightly shorter version of Emma.
"Taylor!" Zoe said, stepping back and gesturing for me to come inside. "Come in, come in!" I moved through the doorway, looking around as she closed the door behind me and reset the deadbolt. Immediately after I was drawn into a hug, the woman holding it for a few seconds before stepping away. "It's been too long! How are you? You've gotten so tall!"
I smiled, unable to keep myself from getting caught up in her enthusiasm. "Hi Zoe. I'm doing alright." Which, strangely enough, was actually true. "How are you?"
"Oh, I'm doing just fine. Nothing too exciting. Just the usual, you know how it is," she said. "Are you here to see Emma?"
I nodded hesitantly.
"Alright, hold on." She turned towards the stairs, calling up to the second floor in what I knew was the direction of Emma's room. "Emma!"
A loud "What?" was returned.
"Taylor's here!"
Dead silence, and then the sound of a door hurriedly pulled open and a rush towards the railing by the stairs. Emma appeared after a few seconds, tensing as soon as she saw me.
"What."
([Emotion emulation processes reduced to 66%])
"Hey, Emma."
Her expressions shifted so fast I couldn't accurately place them, eventually landing on a blank mask.
Fast, but not too, fast, and still tense, she descended the stairs towards me. "What is it?"
To the average person, and maybe to Zoe, Emma sounded calm, collected. However there was an almost imperceptible frostiness to her voice, and years of being around her made it easy to recognize.
I shrugged. "Just here to talk, catch up, you know."
Emma's eyes flicked over to her mother, even as she stood on the second to last step, making me look up to her.
I had no doubt that was intentional.
I could tell she wasn't comfortable interacting with me in front of her mother, likely because suddenly there were two personas, two attitudes she normally kept separate clashing together. Acting hostile to me would only raise questions from Zoe.
Emma smiled at me suddenly. "Of course, Taylor! Come on," she said, grabbing my hand and almost pulling me upstairs. She was gripping my hand like she was trying to squeeze the life out of it, and it probably would have hurt …except there wasn't really anything she could do that could hurt me.
I followed easily, my longer legs letting me keep up with her faster pace as she dragged me down the hall and into her room, dropping my hand as soon as the door was closed.
"What the fuck do you think you're doing here, Taylor?"
([Emotion emulation processes reduced to 31%])
"I just want to talk," I told her calmly.
"Fuck you, Taylor. Get out of my house," she snarled.
"I want you to stop being such a bitch to me at school."
She snorted. "How about… no?"
([Emotion emulation processes reduced to 26%])
"Can you seriously not stop, for one minute?" I asked. "You don't have to act here, Emma. There's nobody watching you, nobody you have to prove anything to. It's just you and me."
She sneered. "You think I'm acting? Wow, Taylor, I didn't know you were delusional too. Maybe I should tell your dad so they can take you off and put you with all the other crazies where you belong. I'm sure you'd all get along great."
([Emotion emulation processes reduced to 17%])
I sighed, rubbing my temples. It didn't do anything for me, but it was still something to do as I collected my thoughts. "Why didn't you just tell me, Emma?"
"What the fuck are you talking about, Taylor?" she said, staring at me coldly.
"Do you know how worried I was? The phone call just dropped, and I had no idea what was happening. I tried calling you back three times, and they went straight to voicemail."
She was staring at me, not moving, but I could see that her face had lost a little of its color.
"I called the house phone here whenever I got the chance, but Zoe kept saying you didn't want to talk, and she didn't know why. I was really worried by then," I said. "Can you imagine it? Your best friend's phone stops working mid-call, and then she won't talk to you for the next two weeks?"
She tried to sneer, but didn't really manage it. "I was just cutting you off like I'd wanted to do since before your mom bit it."
I shook my head. "That's bullshit, Emma, and you and I both know it. You don't drop a friendship mid-call. You were always the better liar, but there's no way you faked being my friend for over a year after Mom. I may have believed you on the steps a year and a half ago, but I was emotional and confused, and I've had a long time to think about it."
She opened her mouth, but I didn't let her say anything. "You were going to tell me. You were going to reach out, and then I said that stupid comment about your hair and you shut down."
"You actually believe that Taylor?" she asked scathingly, though she had crossed her arms in front of her and was leaning back on her heel defensively. "You really are crazy."
"Sophia told me."
And just like that, her remaining composure shattered. "W-what?"
"Sophia told me what happened to you in that alley–"
"No," she whispered, her face bone-white. "She didn't. You can't."
I sighed, leaning back against the door. "Emma…"
She started looking panicked. "No!"
"Emma, calm down."
"NO! I'm not weak, you are. I'm not like you, I'm not," she said vehemently, and it seemed more like she was trying to convince herself than me.
([Emotion emulation processes reduced to 5%])
"So you need me to prove that? Bullying someone doesn't mean you're strong, Emma. It just means that you're insecure and need other people to hold up your self-worth. Do you know why I never fought back?" I asked.
She shook her head mechanically, like she was only doing it because she'd been prompted, but she hadn't actually thought about it.
"Because I cared, Emma. Because every time I looked at you, I saw my sister. And no matter how much you hurt me, I wasn't going to sink to your level and do the same to you, because nobody deserves that," I said.
Her face was still blank, void of anything, and I could only hope that I was getting through to her.
I sighed, looking at my hands. My hands that could crush metal like tissue paper, made out of super-configurable nanomachines. I would have been extremely tempted to use every advantage I had, had I gone against the trio, but using my abilities for that just felt wrong.
"And then… and then you pulled that stunt with the locker." I looked back up at her. "You made me helpless, deliberately made me as terrified as possible, so that you could feel like you had power over me. It's just… ironic, that you've ended up becoming the same sort of person that hurt you."
It was that that finally got a reaction out of her. She started shaking, her body tense and eyes wide. "No…"
I pushed myself upright, and she took a step back. "It's funny. The Emma I knew? Before all of this? The one who reached out and talked about things, who relied on other people and asked for help? She was strong."
I left the "and the person you've turned into isn't" unsaid.
Emma flinched like she'd been burned.
"If you want to stay like that, just keep away from me. It'll be better for both of us. Otherwise, you know where I am," I told her, looking over my shoulder as I stepped out of her room, still not entirely sure what Emma's thoughts were and only hoping that I'd gotten through.
The ball's in your court, now.
I walked down the stairs slowly, and saw Zoe sitting at the counter of the kitchen down the hall from the entrance atrium-y area, drinking what appeared to be iced tea. She looked over at me as I reached the first floor, and as much as I would have liked to just leave at that point, I knew I couldn't do that.
"You two alright?" she asked. "I was disappointed when you and Emma stopped seeing each other. You were a good influence on her."
I grimaced. "Not… really. It was all her. I… she just… changed and left me behind. She never told me why. I came back from camp, and she was acting all weird, and I had no idea what had happened. She just stopped talking to me. And I only found out what happened to her yesterday."
Zoe sighed, but nodded. "She wasn't talking to anyone, didn't say anything for weeks. She's never really been same, and I think Anne being off at college hasn't helped any. I'd hoped you would help her, but it didn't happen that way, did it? I would've tried to get you two together if I'd known you were slipping apart. But before I knew it, you'd disappeared, and she refused to talk about you."
"She's… not doing well," I said, looking up.
Zoe frowned. "What do you mean?"
"Like…" I rubbed my left arm. Fuck this was awkward to say. "I think she should see a therapist."
"What?" Zoe asked sounding surprised. "Why?"
"I don't think she's gotten over it yet," I told her. "And, and it's still affecting her. I don't know if anybody else notices, but there's little things every so often. She probably still has nightmares?" She nodded hesitantly. "It's likely she has PTSD."
"Really?" she asked incredulously. "Isn't that only for soldiers?"
I shook my head. "It can happen to anybody who experiences something traumatic."
Zoe looked thoughtful.
"I mean, it's just a thought," I added.
She took a sip of her tea before exhaling. "No, I understand. We suggested she go before, but she didn't do anything. And I know you're only saying this because it's obvious you still care about her, I mean, you grew up with Emma for seven years, joined at the hip. You were practically another daughter to me. …So I know I can trust you with this." I winced to myself. A few months ago, before the incident, that may have not been true with how emotional I was about everything surrounding Emma. "And… it's true. She hasn't been the same since that day. I want my daughter back. I want to see her smile and laugh again." She looked over at me. "Do you really think talking about it with some therapist would help?" she asked.
I shrugged. "I don't know. But isn't it at least worth trying?"
She finished off her tea and then nodded. "I'll talk to Alan about it. Thank you, Taylor."
I smiled slightly. "Yeah, of course."
I finished my spine only a couple hours after leaving the Barnes' house, and began moving on to the rest of my pseudo-endoskeleton. It wouldn't exactly look like a human skeleton, but that was intentional. Evolution may be good, but a quantum supercomputer as powerful as I was running simulations for days to achieve exactly what I wanted was better. And evolution never had access to the sorts of materials I was playing with.
My skeletal analogue would be finished by the end of the next day, helped by the fact that I'd gotten another six bags of charcoal. I'd needed to swing by the Boat Graveyard and pick up enough nanomaterial to make a wagon so that I wouldn't get any suspicious looks carrying the bags home myself, though. I was home by seven, and got dinner together for Dad and I, doing homework afterwards.
I checked a couple things online before going to bed, and was surprised to find out I'd missed a fight between Kaiser, Rune, Fenja, and Menja against Dauntless, Miss Militia, and Velocity while I'd been at Emma's house.
Probably for the best, considering my last interaction with the Protectorate.
The day had been pretty amazing in retrospect, meeting Brianna, talking to Vista, dealing with the Emma situation, making my skeleton.
If only I'd known what the rest of the week would hold.
A/N: IT'S OVER NIIIINE THOUUSSAAAAANDDDDD.
Hysterical teenage girls are not fun. I was one once. Woooo family life.
(also random F/GO reference that I didn't even realize until two days after writing that part)
Last edited:
Twei
I have a face!
- Location
- the land where they write things
- Pronouns
- They/Them
To be honest, I'm much more concerned about what your sig says now.
Shard interlude time? I'm a little bit scared.
More scared than that last line waaaait a minute.
Actual reaction in a bit, probably
- Location
- USA
Wow, Taylor grew a spine and did something proactive! And she also started replacing her bodyparts with new material as well.