- Pronouns
- They/Them
Nope. Next question.
Wolf Spider (Worm) (Complete)
- Thread starter The Laurent
- Start date
Nope. Next question.
Subrosian_Smithy
endless
- Location
- Washington
- Pronouns
- She/Her/Hers
Zeuseus
KNEEL BEFORE YOUR GOD!!
Probably because conflict in a narrative sense requires the ability to overcome the source of the conflict to be functional. Endbringers are not something you overcome (without serious plot shenanigans), they are something you survive.
Because they are such a large threat with no hope of successfully being beaten by our protagonists, it's very difficult to engage with them as a reader.
Now, the characterisation and stuff that can occur as a result of an endbringer attack and the subsequent collateral damage? That shit is a goldmine of opportunity and interest hooks if the writer is on the ball.
- Pronouns
- They/Them
No they don't? Like, I'm not sure where you're getting your understanding of narrative conflict, but disaster narratives in fact exist. Surviving something is in fact overcoming it in the sense that matters.
A book about escaping a burning building (there's been movies) doesn't have to require you to put out the fire to have an external conflict and narrative.
Obviously, writers of Worm fanfic who treat the Endbringers in the wrong way can create that impression, but fuck that, frankly.
Mechanical
Initiate Action: Buzz
- Location
- Somewhere Strange
I suppose a problem is we already know that nothing significant is going to be achieved - or, at least, if it is, it won't be by the protagonists. Some people might die, and the city will be messed up afterwards. The Endbringer won't be killed - but if it is, that's a different problem - and it's not like Taylor or Rachel are gonna get killed.
The only thing that might change from every other EB fight is who dies and if they get injured or not. All the interesting stuff then happens after the fight is over.
Anyway, I don't want to seem like I'm trying to be discouraging or having a go or anything, so I'll leave it here.
The only thing that might change from every other EB fight is who dies and if they get injured or not. All the interesting stuff then happens after the fight is over.
Anyway, I don't want to seem like I'm trying to be discouraging or having a go or anything, so I'll leave it here.
- Pronouns
- They/Them
Nothing significant. Hah.
- Location
- New Jersey, USA
I think it's partly how people don't like to see a protagonist's (or antagonist's) progress destroyed by something that is very much out of their control. It's a bit too close to Deus Ex Machina/Diabolous.
There's also rarely any lead-up/foreshadowing, which also contributes to the feeling of 'out of nowhere, a Wild Endbringer Appears!!!'
And, of course, the fact that the Endbringers are sandbagging induces a sense of 'even if the protagonist does really well against the Endbringer (super-punch/tinkertech/organisation/etc), then it wouldn't matter, because the Endbringer would just bring out it's full power and squash any progress made.
It is similar to a Disaster Survival story, so there is certainly potential there, but...
I've never been a fan of disaster survival stories, so... *shrug*
Bailey Matutine
(Verified Pooka)
- Location
- Pelican Town
- Pronouns
- They/Them
Actually, I think that if Bitch and Arachne are working co-op on search and recovery, they can make significant and interesting progress depending on who they rescue, how, and who sees them do it.
Just showing up and punching their time cards on an endbringer fight is going to get them a certain amount of slack, frankly, and then you add in some personal gratitude from people who might not otherwise be inclined to see them positively?
This isn't going to be a step backwards. It might not be a step forwards, but it can at least be an interesting step to the side.
Just showing up and punching their time cards on an endbringer fight is going to get them a certain amount of slack, frankly, and then you add in some personal gratitude from people who might not otherwise be inclined to see them positively?
This isn't going to be a step backwards. It might not be a step forwards, but it can at least be an interesting step to the side.
- Location
- Somewhere!
- Pronouns
- She/Her
If you're thinking of Endbringers as a villain / antagonist at all, then I think your mindset is a little bit off. They're just something that happens, in the same way and Earthquake might level a town. Which can be, in my opinion, a really engaging story.
You survive them, and you pick up the pieces after, which is why a lot of the plot and character development has to happen afterwards. All you can really showcase during the fight is how people are reacting in a time of crisis, and who struggles and fails and who scrapes by.
I hope you'll find the arc engaging, and a lot of care was put into not making this "Yet Another Endbringer Fight" for a lot of reasons. At the very least, the narrative so far isn't the kind of story where the Endbringer is suddenly going to undo all the progress Taylor made, because Taylor's motivations aren't tied to that kind of thing?
- Pronouns
- They/Them
You forget about the fourth Endbringer, Cupid!
He specializes in causing chaos by breaking hearts!
- Location
- Somewhere!
- Pronouns
- She/Her
I'm now imagining a romance story that gets interrupted my Magical Girl Sparkling Love Fighter Ziz, who breaks up the ship because she'd rather pair them in an OTP with someone else.
Jeeze could you imagine Ziz bombs with the sole purpose of shippingI'm now imagining a romance story that gets interrupted my Magical Girl Sparkling Love Fighter Ziz, who breaks up the ship because she'd rather pair them in an OTP with someone else.
- Pronouns
- They/Them
That's more Leviathan's thing.
Vindictus
XENO
- Location
- Texas
No, Levi's thing is sinking ships.
- Pronouns
- They/Them
I'm legitimately starting to get my threads mixed up.
- Pronouns
- They/Them
Big reveal time!
The next Interlude, 3-A, is Greg!
The next Interlude, 3-A, is Greg!
Vindictus
XENO
- Location
- Texas
Retreading the stations of canon?
Is to murder it.
The Greg interlude in canon Worm is when he figures out that Taylor is Skitter.
The Greg interlude here is, I assume, roughly contemporaneous to this latest chapter- where Greg figured out that Taylor is Arachne.
The Greg interlude here is, I assume, roughly contemporaneous to this latest chapter- where Greg figured out that Taylor is Arachne.
Callmesalticidae
probably not a spider
- Location
- Burlington, Vermont
- Pronouns
- Any
Is there an "increasing sense of dread" button that I can hit, instead of "Like" or "Informative?"
- Location
- Somewhere!
- Pronouns
- She/Her
I believe a hug is the rating for that. As in "I need a hug when I'm scared of what Endbringer-kun might do."
Bite 3-A (Greg)
- Pronouns
- They/Them
Bite 3A (Greg)
Greg Veder was not a sociable boy. His mom might have used terms like 'closed in' or 'needs more sun' but the truth was, he just didn't… he got out, surely. What were the tournaments? What about the video game gatherings? Sure, it was all impersonal, all indirect, but wasn't that the point?
Greg Veder asked himself a lot of questions in the safety of his head that he couldn't really answer, not without having to wonder about his future. He wasn't arrogant, though he did have his pride, and his own sense of… well, that he was smart. And he was. He got A's, and he was a pretty decent card game player, and he was… maybe not eSports level, but he had some skill at video games.
But listing it all out like that made him feel inadequate. Especially when his mother got on to her stories about his father.
"Your father was in the military, a SEAL, actually," she'd said once, before launching into an involved story involving his father and a prank that had been played during boot camp. He had listened and nodded, fascinated in the moment.
His thoughts overflowed in an excited babble at times, but he'd been content to just hear it all, take it all in.
He had a lot to live up to, and he wasn't, not really. He was just messing about online and living his life. It was as if his real life would start once he graduated college with a degree in… something? His Mom wanted him to be great, and had given up on him being military, and that left… what?
He didn't really know. Usually he didn't ask. Usually he just talked and babbled and raced ahead in life, towards an end he hadn't figured out yet. Taylor listened to him, even if nobody else did that. He liked that.
She was… special. There was something about her that just made him sweat and get nervous, his pulse racing, his body just…
He needed to say something, but he wasn't Hero Law. He'd seen tons of romances in the fantasy and sci-fi novels he'd read, let alone the anime, the movies… there was a lot of media for him to draw on, and all of it seemed to be saying the same thing. He should give it a try, he had a chance.
Friends became lovers. The smart loser got the girl if he just asked and respected her. And he didn't know how he couldn't respect Taylor. She was so smart, and she had to deal with the bullying, and she made time for him in a way that he knew that most people wouldn't have bothered with.
And there was something about her eyes that haunted his fantasies. Something about his imagination that made him feel like a horrible person. Something? No, he knew exactly what it was.
How did you do two things at once? How were you a friend and a romantic interest? How did you combine respect and desire, anyways?
And there was a lot of desire. Overflowing desire, and… and.
Well, he didn't like to think about that too much, except when he did, and either way it was all terribly, dreadfully awkward.
Movies didn't really talk about that, did they? Couldn't have, not if they didn't want to be censored.
So he'd watched her. He'd learned about her, and he'd seen her in his dreams and in his head, he'd memorized her laugh the few times she did, and he'd grown to appreciate the smile, even as rare as it was. She'd smiled so rarely each one was a treasure.
Greg would like to think that he was his own sort of expert on Taylor Hebert. How she thought, what she thought. As it turned out, he was wrong, but even at the time he was dismayed when he realized that she wasn't smiling any more than usual.
Still occasional, though with this odd look in her eyes that was guilty and then confused for a moment, as if she were sorting through something. But even when she wasn't smiling, there was this odd, cute, tight-lipped satisfaction about her, even on the days when she was down. It was happiness without a smile, because it didn't need one, it was just as beautiful and just as welcome.
And yet, he hadn't begun to guess what it was until she told him. Someone.
No, not just someone. A girl.
A part of him had wanted to lock himself in the room and rage and… he didn't write poetry, but bad poetry was probably what teenagers did when they learned that not only had they lost the 'race' but that they weren't in the running at all.
A part of him was very stupid, and a part of him was also aware that it was cruel, and stupid. His mom had raised him, he knew--or thought he should know, even if parts of him deep down were squirming--that he had absolutely no claim on her.
He was… just a friend.
It was the kind of phrase that weighed on you, weighed you down, and he hated that. So he'd not let it weigh him down, at least not much. He'd tried instead to be a good friend, and happy for her, and was glad that there seemed to be little chance that it'd get out anytime soon.
The kids at school were cruel, not just to her, but to him as well. More taunting and jokes than anything else, comments about his clothes and his hair and the way he walked and talked and acted.
Nothing like what they'd done to her. But it had felt like kinship, at the time. It felt like he and she shared something, and maybe they did. But so did friends, which was what he was to her, and what he had to be, what he had to act like.
It was still just really, really odd to watch how she changed. He wondered if she knew about it, if she realized how different she was becoming, and how fast. He wanted to talk to her about it, babbling as he always did, but he wasn't sure what she'd say. What if she knew, and revealing all of this proved that he paid too much attention to her. He wasn't a stalker! Or something. But what if she thought he was and then they fought and then, and then.
His mother was a worrier. Sometimes in the privacy of his own mind, he was far more like her than he would have wanted to admit.
It was the little things at first. Happier, slightly more sure, at least until the course of true love or whatever hit a few snags. Then she worried in a way that was… also quite impressive, in its own way.
But what really, really got him were a few details. First, as time went on, she glanced around in worry less often. She'd walk through a room as if she owned it, as if there was no chance that she could possibly be stopped or tripped up, and she'd ignore every cruel word one day, and the next, instead of flinching, she froze instead, like she was on alert and battle music was about to play.
There was something hard and strong about her eyes when she looked at Emma, something far less broken and scared than he was used to, and she spoke with more confidence. Not just happier, but stronger.
But it was definitely the regal part that made the most sense when he learned the truth. The way she knew everything. 'Don't try the soup' she'd say one day, and then some kid would complain that it tasted weird that day.
...or that there was a fly in it.
She didn't trip, she didn't stumble, she moved with an effortless, beautiful grace that had him staring. It wasn't even… it didn't seem like grace at all. It seemed like thoughtlessness. But then it kept on getting her to step over the bullies, step around their little verbal traps, and he knew that she struggled with it still.
But that was her very impressive change in demeanor forcing them to try harder and harder, to push the limit of their new normal, after the wakeup call impossible boss fight that was the locker.
That was what they'd done to her before.
He hadn't ever expected her to be baited. He hadn't expected how this would all end.
*******
The weekend before his life changed, he was sitting up in his room, watching an old anime from the 90s, back before everything went to heck. His room was small, but filled to the brim with video games and posters on the wall and books everywhere. It was a mess, and it smelled horrible, even by his own standards, and he was used to it.
He ate there, he slept there, he threw himself into bed some nights without showering, he did all sorts of other things there, and then he didn't clean up except the obvious stuff.
He didn't leave dirty dishes in the room, and he did nothing that crossed the line from unhygienic to really, really gross. Still, when his Mom, a short, plump woman, stepped in, she waved her hands. "You have to clean this."
"What is it Mom?" he asked, looking up as he scrambled. He was on the floor, and it took a moment for him to grab the remote and turn the volume down. In that moment, he almost knocked over a drink, and did knock over a bowl of cheetos. "Darn," he said, and began picking them up and putting them back in the bowl.
Better than stepping on them later.
"A friend at work wanted to have a family get-together," she said, rubbing her eyes. She'd looked tired lately, and her job was very important, really. She worked in one of the offices, as… some sort of mid-level executive. She had a lot of debts, and her life was sank into the slightly run-down house (another thing he shared with Taylor), but she made good money, there was that, and he knew that he couldn't do her job to save his life.
Probably never would be up for it.
"Oh?" he asked.
"His daughter's coming, and her boyfriend. It's next week, so I was thinking… you could ask Taylor."
Greg spluttered. He… he hadn't given her the impression that Taylor was his girlfriend, had he? He stood up, "Um, she's not my…"
"Oh, I just assumed," his Mom said, sounding disappointed. "Well, you could ask her out. Or ask her to come as a family friend, if you wanted to… lure her? I've always thought that she sounded like a levelheaded girl from what you described."
"O-oh," Greg said, imagining for a moment if he just… made up some sort of trick to get her to agree to come (because she's never come on her own, she was too aware of what it would be), and then somehow his life turned into a third-rate sitcom. "Well…" he began, startlingly tempted by the vision of what a disaster it would be.
It was like when you got to the edge of a cliff and then for a moment you thought you'd step forward and go over, or when you held a knife and had this sudden terror that you'd cut yourself… despite not having any desire to do so.
Perhaps it was just him that felt that, of course, he reflected.
"I… she has something next weekend. I'm not sure when. But…"
Greg trailed off. What was he allowed to say? He didn't want to betray her trust, and he knew that when it talked, he talked. He was the sort of person who would crack under pressure, and that meant that when it came to secrets, it was best not to get close to them.
He wasn't proud of it, really. He also didn't know what his Mom thought of that sort of thing. It couldn't be too bad, or he'd hear an earful, and you couldn't work in a major corporation without at least being able to ignore that people were different, and some of those differences included, well, who you were dating. Or who you had married.
At the same time, you never knew, and it wasn't his secret. "Well, I'm not sure what day, but, uh, she has dinner with her Dad and a friend."
"A friend? Do you want to go?" his Mom asked, looking at him thoughtfully. "If it's not at the same time, you could. A trade, for instance, would be quite beneficial…"
"A trade?" he asked.
"Building ties is important. He's going to support a move I'm making, and so I need your cooperation, Greg."
"Mom," he said. "It's important. She's… this is a friend that her Dad doesn't--"
"A… male friend?" Mom asked. "Someone she's dating?"
"Um, no? I dunno. I mean I wouldn't know, who do you really get to know everything about there's always a part of someone that is hidden and secret and you shouldn't violate that secrecy because it is a bad thing and it makes you a bad friend and bad friends are a plague upon our society, as Hero Law would say, and so--"
She let him babble. And then she said. "That is a yes, then, Greg?"
"N-no! I didn't say it was a yes. Why do you think it's a yes?"
"Because I know you," his mother said, with a shake of her head. "Well, if she can't come, she can't come."
Greg tries not to slump in relief. Greg fails in this, as he's always failed when it comes to hiding things, except from Taylor… and sometimes he wonders if she's just politely ignoring it.
******
It came in slow motion. The crash, the collapse.
He hadn't expected it. He didn't think she expected it. He stared, somewhere between horrified and dreadfully, nonsensically proud.
It wasn't as if they didn't deserve it, after all.
Yet maybe he's his mother's son, because the first thing he thinks is, 'Oh God, this is going to go wrong.'
He'd never wanted to be right less in his life.
It wasn't until late at night when he knew how right he was.
********
At eleven o'clock, he should be asleep. Instead, he was playing games and surfing the internet, even though he knew his Mom would have skinned him alive if she knew. She set a clear bed-time of ten, and he turned down the volume and crawled into bed, and then crawled right back out once she was asleep.
The phone rang downstairs, and he almost let it keep on ringing, but what if it was Taylor or… something?
She hadn't answered any of his texts. All twenty of them.
So he mussed his hair and exited out of the game, and then raced downstairs.
He picked up the phone, hoping his Mom hadn't woken up. "H-hello?"
"Is this… Greg?" a voice asked on the other end. He recognized Taylor's father.
"Yes, uh, is Taylor alright?"
"Taylor left," Dad said. "Do you know where she could be?"
"She left? What? Where? Why?"
"I… might have told her something." There was a sigh on the other end, "She got angry, she left. She… there were bugs or something, and they spoke with her voice."
Spoke with her voice? Greg tilted his head. "What do you mean?"
"It was like she was controlling them. Is she some sort of villain or something?"
Bugs.
Her voice.
Greg almost dropped the phone. "What?!"
He said it so loud the door to his mother's room upstairs opened, and her head peeked out. "What is it, Greg?"
"N-nothing."
He knew a hero who could do that. "Do you know something?"
"Uh, uh, she's not a villain. Definitely not," Greg said. "Oh god, is she really… I have to go. Now. Um, your daughter is probably safe and stuff, I know she has a friend and--"
"I know too. That's what it was about. Things got out of hand. She left with a bag."
Greg stared at the phone. What.
It got worse from there.
*******
It was when he started looking up Arachne that he started to realize just what was happening. Rachel Lindt.
Greg was very, very thorough once he started looking, and he didn't sleep all night, as he got more and more incredulous. Arachne and Hellhound were working together, fighting crime. Hellhound's actual name was Rachel, and her power involved dogs. Arachne's power involved bugs.
His best friend was dating a supervillain! Only… was she? He had no idea, but he kept on reading, and he wound up making angry posts defending her. Everyone thought she might be a villain, or at least, it was a common question, and he knew that they were just being morons.
He had a lot of experience arguing about things in an online message board, and so he sort of just dived in, and only later did he wonder whether he just drew more attention to her. Or whether he came off as if he were her secret alt, though the mods were pretty good at noticing that sort of thing, so they had to know he wasn't.
But it was not the same as fixing anything. Taylor wasn't answering, and Taylor could be in danger. She could… he didn't know what she could be.
******
The answer was… no, not perfect, but good enough. A good enough friend that when it came down to it, she was willing to talk about his interests rather than what he knew she could be talking about. She was living with another girl. A girl that she was dearly interested in, and she still took time to talk about that video game system.
It heartened him, but it also made him feel as if he were responsible for the world. If he messed up, she'd suffer.
If the Trio learned about Arachne… it'd be disaster.
She was placing a lot of trust in him.
He really wished she didn't. Because the truth was clear: she was strong, and he…
*******
He couldn't take it. Even two days of their nonstop bullying, and he was already subsiding, already not answering as much in class. They wanted to talk to him, they wanted to get out her secrets, whatever secrets those were. Or know that she was suffering. They were angry, and when Sophia came back, that anger redoubled, and they were willing to do anything.
He wasn't Taylor. He couldn't fight back, couldn't ignore it.
They kept on confronting him. He struggled to find an answer for what they were doing, struggled to find a way to get out of it.
He… didn't succeed at that either.
******
"C'mon, surely you've heard something from her," Emma said, drawling a little. She was really pretty, but like one of those evil Queens, she was also very evil. The two sometimes went hand in hand, and he took a step back, waving his hands nervously, trying to find the right words to tell them to go away.
But Sophia was looming too, leaning against the locker nearby, her dark, watchful eyes reminding him that she could go after him if he ran.
"N-no, of course not!"
"Really?" Emma asked, with a smirk. "I suppose she doesn't care about you. It's to be expected, she never was a very loyal…"
"Shut up about her," Greg said, though he didn't move to hit her, or do anything to defend her in the way that Greg realized Taylor had been driven for her girlfriend.
"Oh? Why?"
"She's a lot better than you, she's actually…"
Greg trailed off, realizing that he'd been about to say that she was actually working to make the world a better place, actually working as a hero.
"Actually what?"
"Uhhh."
"Do you know a secret about her? Is she dying? No, no, let's say... Is she a Merchant, or just dating one?" Emma asked, with an easy smirk.
"What?" Greg asked, before realizing that he'd reacted too strongly, too incredulously.
"Or maybe she's… no, you were proud of her," Emma said. "What could cause that? What if she was… oho." Emma's smile was the most vicious, twisted thing he'd ever seen, and he turned to run. "A hero?"
But he was running, booking it, hoping he hadn't given away too much. It was his face, always his face.
He hid in the bathroom, texting desperate words of apology in Taylor's general direction, wondering when she'd get them.
He was still there when the sirens started wailing.
*******
A/N: Thanks to @NemoMarx.
Greg Veder was not a sociable boy. His mom might have used terms like 'closed in' or 'needs more sun' but the truth was, he just didn't… he got out, surely. What were the tournaments? What about the video game gatherings? Sure, it was all impersonal, all indirect, but wasn't that the point?
Greg Veder asked himself a lot of questions in the safety of his head that he couldn't really answer, not without having to wonder about his future. He wasn't arrogant, though he did have his pride, and his own sense of… well, that he was smart. And he was. He got A's, and he was a pretty decent card game player, and he was… maybe not eSports level, but he had some skill at video games.
But listing it all out like that made him feel inadequate. Especially when his mother got on to her stories about his father.
"Your father was in the military, a SEAL, actually," she'd said once, before launching into an involved story involving his father and a prank that had been played during boot camp. He had listened and nodded, fascinated in the moment.
His thoughts overflowed in an excited babble at times, but he'd been content to just hear it all, take it all in.
He had a lot to live up to, and he wasn't, not really. He was just messing about online and living his life. It was as if his real life would start once he graduated college with a degree in… something? His Mom wanted him to be great, and had given up on him being military, and that left… what?
He didn't really know. Usually he didn't ask. Usually he just talked and babbled and raced ahead in life, towards an end he hadn't figured out yet. Taylor listened to him, even if nobody else did that. He liked that.
She was… special. There was something about her that just made him sweat and get nervous, his pulse racing, his body just…
He needed to say something, but he wasn't Hero Law. He'd seen tons of romances in the fantasy and sci-fi novels he'd read, let alone the anime, the movies… there was a lot of media for him to draw on, and all of it seemed to be saying the same thing. He should give it a try, he had a chance.
Friends became lovers. The smart loser got the girl if he just asked and respected her. And he didn't know how he couldn't respect Taylor. She was so smart, and she had to deal with the bullying, and she made time for him in a way that he knew that most people wouldn't have bothered with.
And there was something about her eyes that haunted his fantasies. Something about his imagination that made him feel like a horrible person. Something? No, he knew exactly what it was.
How did you do two things at once? How were you a friend and a romantic interest? How did you combine respect and desire, anyways?
And there was a lot of desire. Overflowing desire, and… and.
Well, he didn't like to think about that too much, except when he did, and either way it was all terribly, dreadfully awkward.
Movies didn't really talk about that, did they? Couldn't have, not if they didn't want to be censored.
So he'd watched her. He'd learned about her, and he'd seen her in his dreams and in his head, he'd memorized her laugh the few times she did, and he'd grown to appreciate the smile, even as rare as it was. She'd smiled so rarely each one was a treasure.
Greg would like to think that he was his own sort of expert on Taylor Hebert. How she thought, what she thought. As it turned out, he was wrong, but even at the time he was dismayed when he realized that she wasn't smiling any more than usual.
Still occasional, though with this odd look in her eyes that was guilty and then confused for a moment, as if she were sorting through something. But even when she wasn't smiling, there was this odd, cute, tight-lipped satisfaction about her, even on the days when she was down. It was happiness without a smile, because it didn't need one, it was just as beautiful and just as welcome.
And yet, he hadn't begun to guess what it was until she told him. Someone.
No, not just someone. A girl.
A part of him had wanted to lock himself in the room and rage and… he didn't write poetry, but bad poetry was probably what teenagers did when they learned that not only had they lost the 'race' but that they weren't in the running at all.
A part of him was very stupid, and a part of him was also aware that it was cruel, and stupid. His mom had raised him, he knew--or thought he should know, even if parts of him deep down were squirming--that he had absolutely no claim on her.
He was… just a friend.
It was the kind of phrase that weighed on you, weighed you down, and he hated that. So he'd not let it weigh him down, at least not much. He'd tried instead to be a good friend, and happy for her, and was glad that there seemed to be little chance that it'd get out anytime soon.
The kids at school were cruel, not just to her, but to him as well. More taunting and jokes than anything else, comments about his clothes and his hair and the way he walked and talked and acted.
Nothing like what they'd done to her. But it had felt like kinship, at the time. It felt like he and she shared something, and maybe they did. But so did friends, which was what he was to her, and what he had to be, what he had to act like.
It was still just really, really odd to watch how she changed. He wondered if she knew about it, if she realized how different she was becoming, and how fast. He wanted to talk to her about it, babbling as he always did, but he wasn't sure what she'd say. What if she knew, and revealing all of this proved that he paid too much attention to her. He wasn't a stalker! Or something. But what if she thought he was and then they fought and then, and then.
His mother was a worrier. Sometimes in the privacy of his own mind, he was far more like her than he would have wanted to admit.
It was the little things at first. Happier, slightly more sure, at least until the course of true love or whatever hit a few snags. Then she worried in a way that was… also quite impressive, in its own way.
But what really, really got him were a few details. First, as time went on, she glanced around in worry less often. She'd walk through a room as if she owned it, as if there was no chance that she could possibly be stopped or tripped up, and she'd ignore every cruel word one day, and the next, instead of flinching, she froze instead, like she was on alert and battle music was about to play.
There was something hard and strong about her eyes when she looked at Emma, something far less broken and scared than he was used to, and she spoke with more confidence. Not just happier, but stronger.
But it was definitely the regal part that made the most sense when he learned the truth. The way she knew everything. 'Don't try the soup' she'd say one day, and then some kid would complain that it tasted weird that day.
...or that there was a fly in it.
She didn't trip, she didn't stumble, she moved with an effortless, beautiful grace that had him staring. It wasn't even… it didn't seem like grace at all. It seemed like thoughtlessness. But then it kept on getting her to step over the bullies, step around their little verbal traps, and he knew that she struggled with it still.
But that was her very impressive change in demeanor forcing them to try harder and harder, to push the limit of their new normal, after the wakeup call impossible boss fight that was the locker.
That was what they'd done to her before.
He hadn't ever expected her to be baited. He hadn't expected how this would all end.
*******
The weekend before his life changed, he was sitting up in his room, watching an old anime from the 90s, back before everything went to heck. His room was small, but filled to the brim with video games and posters on the wall and books everywhere. It was a mess, and it smelled horrible, even by his own standards, and he was used to it.
He ate there, he slept there, he threw himself into bed some nights without showering, he did all sorts of other things there, and then he didn't clean up except the obvious stuff.
He didn't leave dirty dishes in the room, and he did nothing that crossed the line from unhygienic to really, really gross. Still, when his Mom, a short, plump woman, stepped in, she waved her hands. "You have to clean this."
"What is it Mom?" he asked, looking up as he scrambled. He was on the floor, and it took a moment for him to grab the remote and turn the volume down. In that moment, he almost knocked over a drink, and did knock over a bowl of cheetos. "Darn," he said, and began picking them up and putting them back in the bowl.
Better than stepping on them later.
"A friend at work wanted to have a family get-together," she said, rubbing her eyes. She'd looked tired lately, and her job was very important, really. She worked in one of the offices, as… some sort of mid-level executive. She had a lot of debts, and her life was sank into the slightly run-down house (another thing he shared with Taylor), but she made good money, there was that, and he knew that he couldn't do her job to save his life.
Probably never would be up for it.
"Oh?" he asked.
"His daughter's coming, and her boyfriend. It's next week, so I was thinking… you could ask Taylor."
Greg spluttered. He… he hadn't given her the impression that Taylor was his girlfriend, had he? He stood up, "Um, she's not my…"
"Oh, I just assumed," his Mom said, sounding disappointed. "Well, you could ask her out. Or ask her to come as a family friend, if you wanted to… lure her? I've always thought that she sounded like a levelheaded girl from what you described."
"O-oh," Greg said, imagining for a moment if he just… made up some sort of trick to get her to agree to come (because she's never come on her own, she was too aware of what it would be), and then somehow his life turned into a third-rate sitcom. "Well…" he began, startlingly tempted by the vision of what a disaster it would be.
It was like when you got to the edge of a cliff and then for a moment you thought you'd step forward and go over, or when you held a knife and had this sudden terror that you'd cut yourself… despite not having any desire to do so.
Perhaps it was just him that felt that, of course, he reflected.
"I… she has something next weekend. I'm not sure when. But…"
Greg trailed off. What was he allowed to say? He didn't want to betray her trust, and he knew that when it talked, he talked. He was the sort of person who would crack under pressure, and that meant that when it came to secrets, it was best not to get close to them.
He wasn't proud of it, really. He also didn't know what his Mom thought of that sort of thing. It couldn't be too bad, or he'd hear an earful, and you couldn't work in a major corporation without at least being able to ignore that people were different, and some of those differences included, well, who you were dating. Or who you had married.
At the same time, you never knew, and it wasn't his secret. "Well, I'm not sure what day, but, uh, she has dinner with her Dad and a friend."
"A friend? Do you want to go?" his Mom asked, looking at him thoughtfully. "If it's not at the same time, you could. A trade, for instance, would be quite beneficial…"
"A trade?" he asked.
"Building ties is important. He's going to support a move I'm making, and so I need your cooperation, Greg."
"Mom," he said. "It's important. She's… this is a friend that her Dad doesn't--"
"A… male friend?" Mom asked. "Someone she's dating?"
"Um, no? I dunno. I mean I wouldn't know, who do you really get to know everything about there's always a part of someone that is hidden and secret and you shouldn't violate that secrecy because it is a bad thing and it makes you a bad friend and bad friends are a plague upon our society, as Hero Law would say, and so--"
She let him babble. And then she said. "That is a yes, then, Greg?"
"N-no! I didn't say it was a yes. Why do you think it's a yes?"
"Because I know you," his mother said, with a shake of her head. "Well, if she can't come, she can't come."
Greg tries not to slump in relief. Greg fails in this, as he's always failed when it comes to hiding things, except from Taylor… and sometimes he wonders if she's just politely ignoring it.
******
It came in slow motion. The crash, the collapse.
He hadn't expected it. He didn't think she expected it. He stared, somewhere between horrified and dreadfully, nonsensically proud.
It wasn't as if they didn't deserve it, after all.
Yet maybe he's his mother's son, because the first thing he thinks is, 'Oh God, this is going to go wrong.'
He'd never wanted to be right less in his life.
It wasn't until late at night when he knew how right he was.
********
At eleven o'clock, he should be asleep. Instead, he was playing games and surfing the internet, even though he knew his Mom would have skinned him alive if she knew. She set a clear bed-time of ten, and he turned down the volume and crawled into bed, and then crawled right back out once she was asleep.
The phone rang downstairs, and he almost let it keep on ringing, but what if it was Taylor or… something?
She hadn't answered any of his texts. All twenty of them.
So he mussed his hair and exited out of the game, and then raced downstairs.
He picked up the phone, hoping his Mom hadn't woken up. "H-hello?"
"Is this… Greg?" a voice asked on the other end. He recognized Taylor's father.
"Yes, uh, is Taylor alright?"
"Taylor left," Dad said. "Do you know where she could be?"
"She left? What? Where? Why?"
"I… might have told her something." There was a sigh on the other end, "She got angry, she left. She… there were bugs or something, and they spoke with her voice."
Spoke with her voice? Greg tilted his head. "What do you mean?"
"It was like she was controlling them. Is she some sort of villain or something?"
Bugs.
Her voice.
Greg almost dropped the phone. "What?!"
He said it so loud the door to his mother's room upstairs opened, and her head peeked out. "What is it, Greg?"
"N-nothing."
He knew a hero who could do that. "Do you know something?"
"Uh, uh, she's not a villain. Definitely not," Greg said. "Oh god, is she really… I have to go. Now. Um, your daughter is probably safe and stuff, I know she has a friend and--"
"I know too. That's what it was about. Things got out of hand. She left with a bag."
Greg stared at the phone. What.
It got worse from there.
*******
It was when he started looking up Arachne that he started to realize just what was happening. Rachel Lindt.
Greg was very, very thorough once he started looking, and he didn't sleep all night, as he got more and more incredulous. Arachne and Hellhound were working together, fighting crime. Hellhound's actual name was Rachel, and her power involved dogs. Arachne's power involved bugs.
His best friend was dating a supervillain! Only… was she? He had no idea, but he kept on reading, and he wound up making angry posts defending her. Everyone thought she might be a villain, or at least, it was a common question, and he knew that they were just being morons.
He had a lot of experience arguing about things in an online message board, and so he sort of just dived in, and only later did he wonder whether he just drew more attention to her. Or whether he came off as if he were her secret alt, though the mods were pretty good at noticing that sort of thing, so they had to know he wasn't.
But it was not the same as fixing anything. Taylor wasn't answering, and Taylor could be in danger. She could… he didn't know what she could be.
******
The answer was… no, not perfect, but good enough. A good enough friend that when it came down to it, she was willing to talk about his interests rather than what he knew she could be talking about. She was living with another girl. A girl that she was dearly interested in, and she still took time to talk about that video game system.
It heartened him, but it also made him feel as if he were responsible for the world. If he messed up, she'd suffer.
If the Trio learned about Arachne… it'd be disaster.
She was placing a lot of trust in him.
He really wished she didn't. Because the truth was clear: she was strong, and he…
*******
He couldn't take it. Even two days of their nonstop bullying, and he was already subsiding, already not answering as much in class. They wanted to talk to him, they wanted to get out her secrets, whatever secrets those were. Or know that she was suffering. They were angry, and when Sophia came back, that anger redoubled, and they were willing to do anything.
He wasn't Taylor. He couldn't fight back, couldn't ignore it.
They kept on confronting him. He struggled to find an answer for what they were doing, struggled to find a way to get out of it.
He… didn't succeed at that either.
******
"C'mon, surely you've heard something from her," Emma said, drawling a little. She was really pretty, but like one of those evil Queens, she was also very evil. The two sometimes went hand in hand, and he took a step back, waving his hands nervously, trying to find the right words to tell them to go away.
But Sophia was looming too, leaning against the locker nearby, her dark, watchful eyes reminding him that she could go after him if he ran.
"N-no, of course not!"
"Really?" Emma asked, with a smirk. "I suppose she doesn't care about you. It's to be expected, she never was a very loyal…"
"Shut up about her," Greg said, though he didn't move to hit her, or do anything to defend her in the way that Greg realized Taylor had been driven for her girlfriend.
"Oh? Why?"
"She's a lot better than you, she's actually…"
Greg trailed off, realizing that he'd been about to say that she was actually working to make the world a better place, actually working as a hero.
"Actually what?"
"Uhhh."
"Do you know a secret about her? Is she dying? No, no, let's say... Is she a Merchant, or just dating one?" Emma asked, with an easy smirk.
"What?" Greg asked, before realizing that he'd reacted too strongly, too incredulously.
"Or maybe she's… no, you were proud of her," Emma said. "What could cause that? What if she was… oho." Emma's smile was the most vicious, twisted thing he'd ever seen, and he turned to run. "A hero?"
But he was running, booking it, hoping he hadn't given away too much. It was his face, always his face.
He hid in the bathroom, texting desperate words of apology in Taylor's general direction, wondering when she'd get them.
He was still there when the sirens started wailing.
*******
A/N: Thanks to @NemoMarx.
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Baron Steakpuncher
Hopeful Idealist
- Location
- Australia
Mmmm.
Mhmmmmm.
Emma, you done fcked up.
Mhmmmmm.
Emma, you done fcked up.
Night_stalker
Slava Ukraini!
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Huh, a Greg I actually kinda like.
No kidding. I'm more sociable then Canon Greg. Which is just sad.
Business?
Also for his teeth.
And yet, he's not here, now is he?
Greg, don't be creepy.
Well, at least you're aware somewhat.
Oh god, he's getting melodramatic.
"Mom, she's into girls."
Done.
Yeah, on the bright side, at least she's with someone who cares about her.
Well, at least it's SOMETHING. Points for that.
No kidding. I'm more sociable then Canon Greg. Which is just sad.
Business?
Also for his teeth.
And yet, he's not here, now is he?
Greg, don't be creepy.
Well, at least you're aware somewhat.
Oh god, he's getting melodramatic.
"Mom, she's into girls."
Done.
Yeah, on the bright side, at least she's with someone who cares about her.
Well, at least it's SOMETHING. Points for that.
- Location
- ⇙
This was hard to read. So much fremdschämen. But at least he's aware of his flaws, so he's on the right path, I guess?