Silverias
Seeing is Believing
- Location
- Squiddy Places
Well, what I mean is, just by hitting a single place twice, every place that's been hit before can no longer console itself with "Well at least they won't come back."
Wolf Spider (Worm) (Complete)
- Thread starter The Laurent
- Start date
- Location
- Somewhere!
- Pronouns
- She/Her
It also means that if Lyon got off lightly somehow, people can't use that for optimism. Even a lucky break or Scion showing up early can't really save you, etc.
So it makes enough sense that I don't think it's a mistake.
So it makes enough sense that I don't think it's a mistake.
- Location
- Malaysia
https://parahumans.wordpress.com/2013/06/22/interlude-24/#comment-81312
Given the WOG related to the attacks, I highly doubt so. Lyon getting hit is also not silly at all. Lyon is one of the biggest concentrations of people to be living near a nuclear power plant, and Lyon has 3 nuclear plants within 60km of it, where for the majority of major cities with power plants have them either somewhere around 100km away, or have them nearer to their less populated areas. It's a lot easier to believe that Behemoth went there once, failed, then decided to hit it a second time after said city survived and rebuilt.
- Location
- Australia
Okay, that's more information than I had before. Yup, I can see that.
Selonianth
Writer of Words
Wow, Behemoth went through the whole transitioning and surgery process in about 5 seconds. (you changed genders mid sentence) Also, forgot a space.
- Location
- In Bed
If anyone could pull that off, it'd be the endbringers... and Bonesaw
Rabid 4.4
- Pronouns
- They/Them
Rabid 4.4
When Behemoth left, for the last time, the earth shook everywhere. We were as far as we could be from the center of the fight, we'd given up on it, and from the way that the deaths seemed to peter out, that wasn't that bad of a decision. We hadn't abandoned people to die, we'd seen our way through most of the deaths, through most of the chaos, and so I didn't feel all that bad that I wasn't sticking it out.
Now what we needed to do was survive what came after. Not all the buildings would be destroyed, not even that many, but the damage was considerable even all the way to the docks, as I'd find out, and would at least take a few days to repair, at best, and weeks and months at worst.
Then, there was the aftershock. We'd been hurrying along, headed towards the docks, or at least, towards more wide-open areas where the ground wasn't broken, as the roads had been all the way around Behemoth for blocks on every side.
Nothing had fallen down this far away from him, no buildings at least. That was lucky, a bit of luck we'd need more of.
Here, at least, the buildings were more solid, but everything was shaken up and tumbled, and the roads were not built to stand up for this. No doubt even in the least affected places, the rooms would be disarrayed, and in the aftershock I almost fell, and some of the dogs did.
They screamed and kicked up a racket as we waved away dust and cursed and muttered: for all that they'd been through all of this, they were still panicked and startled.
There were fires in the distance, though I could see capes flying towards them already, and high in the sky, I could almost feel Scion's glow. Maybe he'd fix it. Maybe he'd have to, because I didn't know how much beyond my sight as still intact. The city didn't seem destroyed, but what had happened…
I could smell oil, and fire, I could smell rotting sewage, and see burst pipes, water in the streets at places, sinkholes forming. I could imagine the sounds of screams other than the barks in the distance: I could picture the corpses I'd seen made in front of me, smeared and destroyed effortlessly. I couldn't unsee them. I couldn't undo what I'd done, in choosing to take part in the fight.
Deep down I was just as worried as the dogs, but I knew my mask would hide it, as I looked over at Rachel, and said, only, as the dogs got to barking, "I think… that's probably it."
There was one last shock, and then nothing. No more names, the way I'd expect if Behemoth was really running rampant still, because surely the quake would have downed a few more capes, when combined with a fist or a foot, to finish the job. I could picture it in my mind's eye, the puddles of gore, the organs flopping out, the bodies in various states of death, but not decay: no time for decay. Fresh, ripe bodies, people who had been alive not all that long ago, and people I had known. Armsmaster, Othala, Lung: not all of their deaths I regretted, really, but I felt them all.
I had to stop, even though I'd said that it was it, that it was over, because it didn't feel over. I'd saved a few capes, and Pelter hadn't died, and neither had Velocity. I'd transported Flechette, Parian, and the others, and… and. It all felt like so little, too little, that I needed to do something else.
It was quiet on the street, but the Merchants would be out soon, I felt it in my bones as I leaned and tried to clear my mind of the horror. I couldn't stop picturing it, that was the problem. My imagination was too strong, now that it was fueled with reality, and it felt as if I were about to be shaken to pieces along with the buildings that were in the way of Behemoth.
The city had toppled, and it was fallen now, at least for the moment. And where would money come to fix all of this? Endbringer insurance wasn't… it wasn't something that always existed. The richest people, of course they had insurance to cover that, but everyone else? Plus, the earthquakes, there were insurers who would probably argue, because a person could argue anything, that they qualified as that, and not an Endbringer… and nobody had earthquake insurance. It would be like buying insurance against tornadoes in California. Or against Hurricanes in Ohio.
It'd be a mess, and mostly things wouldn't be picked up, not for months. There were cities that never recovered from an Endbringer attack, just limped along. I'd heard all of those stories and all of those minor outrages and I'd never seen it as something to do with me. It'd been bad, of course, something to be shocked about, but no more than that, because it had always been someone else.
Until suddenly we were the victims who would languish. The world was wide, and there were so many cities and potential targets that you just started to hope they'd never get around to you before someone figured out some way to kill them, or stop them.
Or do something other than fight again and again.
We'd saved shelters full of people. I said we as if I'd been doing that, but… still. It was something, but in all that time it hadn't seemed like we'd ever stood a chance of destroying the monster.
That was a thought that could leave you cold and shivering at night.
And the thought of night brought me back up. "Rachel, we need somewhere to sleep." It wasn't night yet, not even close. The whole fight had been… I wasn't even sure. I didn't have a watch, but there were still hours left until the sun dipped, and hours still, this close to summer, until it was dark out.
But we also had no home at all. I knew there would be shelters, or camps that would be set up, for people who were displaced, who couldn't go back to their homes… which would be a large chunk of the entire population, because even the houses that weren't down were at least unsafe enough to raise eyebrows.
That was all things I considered at the time, before I thought about what buildings would be standing at all. We didn't need structural integrity, after all. I breathed in and out as the idea slowly came to me. It wouldn't be occupied, and there would be plenty of room, and there was likely food still frozen, if you were willing to tolerate it, and what choice did I have?
The very idea turned my stomach, actually, but another element of it felt almost… fitting. It was payback for what they'd done.
I grit my teeth and said. "I know where that is?"
"You do?" Rachel asked. She looked at me, and I wondered what she was thinking. I'd ordered her around, and I wondered if that was okay, if she'd trusted me. I knew if she'd thrown her dogs at Behemoth, it would have been a disaster for her. But it had to gall her, it had to go against everything she'd acted like before. She threw herself directly at targets and enemies, she didn't back down, she just kept on pressing with more force until it worked, and I didn't even blame her for it.
It'd worked for her before, so of course she'd try it again.
Could she really have trusted me that much? That was another reason I was trembling, some distant fear that I'd offended her, and she'd let me know at the first safe moment. Because I knew what would have happened if Lisa tried to give her an order like that, or anyone else, no matter how well meaning. I didn't trust it, the idea that I was…
I don't know what I didn't trust, just that I didn't trust in it.
It was a foolish sort of mindset, but it was mine. "Yes. You know Winslow?"
"The school?" she asked, and I didn't smile beneath my mask, but if I was in someone else's company, I would have.
"Yeah, the school. Everyone's gone from it to get into a shelter," I said. "There's a few somewhat near the school, but even if they get out of it right now, they're not going back to school." Sure, the school, like most public buildings, had to partially Endbringer proof at least a few parts of themselves, so it was probably standing… more or less. But the roads wouldn't be safe.
I nodded and stretched my hand out, to gesture at the dogs, who were all gathered around, clearly not sure what was happening next. But like sheep following the good shepherd, they trusted in Rachel to see them through, even if no doubt they couldn't have thought of it that way.
"And there's room," I added, now that she was looking at the dogs. "For all of them. No dog food, but there's meat, and there's other stuff. It won't be great for them, but one night, and then we can find…" I trailed off, thinking. "A dog shelter, or something. To… take over. Or make use of. But I don't know where one is now, and I just want to be somewhere, and know where I'm going."
It was a cry from the heart, and Rachel nodded after a very long moment. Or it felt like that, but I knew I was racing, weary and exhausted, for any port in a storm: a metaphor that might have meant more if it was Leviathan who'd attacked.
"It wasn't in the path of this," I said, not sure which would have been worse. I couldn't imagine worse happening to my city than what had happened here. "We should get rid of the armbands, though."
Rachel reached over and took hers off, and then I took mine off. I looked at them for a moment, wondering if I should have explained myself to yet another person.
But no, it wasn't needed.
The battle was over, and it wasn't any of their business where I was.
I tossed it aside. I took a breath. It felt almost final in a way, though I knew that them and I weren't done, we'd never be as long as I was fighting crime and so were they. But I'd worn their armband, and now I wasn't wearing it.
Rachel stepped forward, and pushed her mask out of the way. "Taylor…" she began. Why was she hesitating.
"Yes?"
"Your Dad," she said. It was as if she were forcing herself to say the words, or as if she thought I needed to hear them. I looked in her face, rough and sweaty. She looked like a mess, red in the face, and not from blushing. Her lips were drawn taut, her thick nose snorting a little as she breathed.
Her eyes were dark and I stared into them for a moment, struck again. The pictures in my head faded away for a moment, because how could you look at her and not see anything else? Even if you weren't head over heels and ignoring her every flaw, there was something striking about her, even if it wasn't attracted. About the way she stared at you. She looked at you and only you with all of her might, as if she had laser vision and was going to do something, when she was angry, or as if she wanted X-ray vision when she wanted to know what you were up to. I knew that it wasn't just the eyes.
There were other features that probably told me her moods, because eyes were just eyes, after all, but it's the eyes I noticed, that my conscious mind interpreted, using all of those unconscious cues. And she trusted me, and wasn't angry at me, or at least, no more than a little frustrated. That's what her face told me, as open as a…
My mind grasped book first, but were books open? The best ones tested you, they had secret meanings that Mom had unveiled and uncovered. They surprised you. Rachel could, sometimes, but not in the same way. She had her own special way.
"You okay?"
Was I staring? Of course I had been. "No," I admitted. "Not after… after all of that. Your dogs."
The pain was real and deep and wrenched, her teeth gritting at that, as she almost growled. "They…"
"We'll protect the others, and, I think." I stopped, not sure what I was about to promise. "I won't forget them. I won't let anyone forget them," I said. I had no idea how to do it, just the odd certainty that I'd definitely do it.
"Good," Rachel said.
"I'm going to gather the bugs, so that we'll know if anyone is coming to attack us. We need to hurry, though. There's plenty of time, but I'd rather just… lay around. I know there are couches in the teacher's lounge, and there's pillows in this one teacher's classroom. She uses them to take naps."
One time a kid had stuck a blunt in her mouth, and then lit it without her waking up. Then, according to her, slipped a tiny baggie of coke into her pants pocket. The administration had believed it, because who carried illegal drugs in their pocket when they went to school as a teacher?
It was a stupid frame-up, which was entirely typical of the class of criminals and scum that haunted Winslow at times.
"Okay," Rachel said, pulling her mask back on.
*******
Many bugs had died, but enough survived, and I gathered them about me as we went, spreading them out, creating the net, the web that I was used to having. They'd done little good, except tell me what I already knew about the fight. But now they were vital. We'd wasted a little time going south, and now we were going to have to wind our way through the streets, whose cracks and tilts made it look drunken, until at last we got to Winslow.
People were moving, people were hiding. There was a shelter we passed on the way to Winslow, and then another. They could only hold so many people, but they weren't as air-tight as they should have been. Heck, they were barely as water-tight as they'd have needed to be, considering I managed to slip bugs in. In one of the shelters, the doors were opened, as if to get in air.
The people were crowded together, stinking, exhausted, clearly out of it, clearly in no mood to stumble out just yet. The food there would last them for up to a week, in theory, though I had a feeling that both of the shelters I passed were over-capacity.
My Dad was in neither of them, that much I managed to figure out after a few minutes of careful consideration. We weren't riding on the dogs, but just pacing along leisurely. Or so it appeared. Rachel was watching all of them, commanding them to stay and not stray, to not chase the smells, to follow me, at the lead, and yet only half there, not appreciating the scenery, what little there was of it, but anticipating the road ahead.
Now and then, I saw flickers of people moving, running through alleys. Some people were out and about, and I had to assume they were criminals, but I didn't want to hit them until I was sure, and I didn't care enough to stop and start some little fight blocks away.
The silence stretched between us, and I wanted to talk to break it, but again I was too busy with the bugs, seeing to our safety.
My bugs, the dogs, we had many lines of defense, and so I should have felt safer. But the people out and about, they were going to be looting. It was inevitable. Heck, what we were doing was probably looting in a sense. Definitely, it wasn't the prettiest of actions, but the food would go to waste, and we weren't going to stay more than one night, so I didn't feel as bad as I should have.
Once we found somewhere to stay for good, we could be heroes, we could stretch ourselves out and get comfortable and make up for any wrongdoings.
It wouldn't be hard, I thought, looking at Rachel. Or maybe it would be, but I knew that she could do it. We could do it, for that matter.
Power was another thing that was down, I thought, probably in huge chunks of the city, one way or another, with all of the disarray. But Rachel and I were used to not having power, to going to sleep when it got dark, and I knew the school had a backup generator. Part of disaster prep that had never really paid off.
There'd been a hurricane that had hit Brockton Bay once, decades ago. That's when the generator was from, before capes even were around, if I remembered its history right. Then when capes and Endbringers had come, they'd become even more common and better made.
Little facts like that rattled around in my brain, the result of education and the kind of mind that could remember the best character build in Xeno-War 2. Little details just stuck to me, sometimes, even when they weren't important.
Greg was even better for little details, and I hoped he was… unhurt at best, but if not, at least alive.
As I approached the school, I began to realize a few things. First, it was not in the best of conditions. Nothing had collapsed, but the parking lot was cracked all over, the bugs seeing that detail rather clearly. And the second floor of the school was now full of holes in some places, the structure wrecked enough that I wouldn't want to step on it… and in a few of the worst cared for classrooms, the roof had caved in altogether.
The bottom floor, though, seemed relatively intact, even if the inside was possibly a mess of glass. I knew where a janitor's closet was, and if we could just step over it, we could brush it all out of the way. We were already having to do something like that with the streets, and I knew that even moving at all was a danger.
Still, the school was standing, and so were most of the buildings, including the gym. So that first piece of news, while not great, wasn't a disaster either. It was something that I could work with, which was more than could be said for a lot of the possible outcomes.
The other thing I realized was that it wasn't empty. In the school, spread out in handfuls and clumps, were people. Some of them smelled of alcohol, and others were in the nurse's office, no doubt raiding it for anything that could be made into drugs. My bugs could smell all sorts of things that added up to drugs and alcohol and poverty. Flashes of their appearance--men and women both--seemed to indicate that these weren't members of the E88 (none of the righ tattoos, and too many non-whites among them), except for one cluster in a far building, which was away from the rest, and no doubt unaware, since they were in one of the 'mobile classrooms' around back.
So, the Merchants, and a few members of the E88, had busted into school to loot and plunder. I couldn't guess at the ages of everyone, even with bugs flying around giving me an impression of some general details.
Except, I could tell at least a cluster of them were students from our school that were part of the Merchants. I recognized them, at least vaguely, through the senses of the bugs.
Contrary to hopes, it took a long time to really build up a picture with bugs, because of how much ground there was to cover, and how limited their senses were, but by the time we were half a block away, in sight of the school, I knew where they are were, and I had figured out which of them were drunk or high, and which were armed.
I wondered if any of them were drowning their pain, the way Dad might have been. I had no idea either way, except that some of them were… having intercourse, and that I was keeping my bugs away from these fine examples of future teen pregnancies.
"Rachel," I said, as we got closer. "There are some Merchants in there. We should take them out."
"Yeah," she said. If only I could send them a message from here? But I could attack them, and as I gathered together wasps and bees and fire ants, and stinging flies, I thought of something I could do.
I tried to find the biggest clump of them, ten people, and then I carefully positioned the bugs all around the room, while they were too busy talking.
"Man, this fucking place," a man said, balding, pale skinned. "How the fuck'd you survive being here all day?"
"Hell if I know," a girl about my age said with a shrug. I knew her, she was in my math class, actually. She had sat in the back and glowered at the wall, clearly here only because she was made to be.
Little conversations, fragments of people's lives. I tried to arrange the bugs on the wall, slowly but surely, to form the words 'Get Out' but they noticed them too soon, and it was hard to drag all the bugs into the right perspective, because I couldn't look at them from a distance. All of their senses didn't tell me anything about how well the bugs were forming the words on the wall, but I hoped it at least looked like words were forming--
"The fuck!" one guy yelled, drawing his gun. The wasps were on him in a moment, and then on all the rest a moment later.
"Taylor?" Rachel asked.
"Sorry, I'm in a fight," I said. "We should be able to just stroll in, the front door's been forced open."
"In a fight?" Rachel asked.
"Yeah, driving them out."
Not just that group. I started my bugs to biting and swarming all over people, wishing I could somehow communicate with my victims, to tell them what they could do to make it stop. I wasn't going to kill anyone, I just needed them out of there. So I let the flies stop biting when one of them ran out of the room. Any of the rooms, including the gym, which doubled as the auditorium.
I took a breath, and then once all of them were out of the room, I had the flies buzz over the entrance back in, and then began to bite and sting them again. It was like herding sheep, I thought, as we walked up to the front doors. I could feel some of the groups approach them.
I rewarded going towards the exit, and not just the front exit, with less stinging, but then if they turned back to help their friends, then I punished them for it. It was all so automatic and easy, just total control without even trying. It wasn't a fight, really.
They couldn't shoot at the bugs, and even as a small group of them headed for the front entrance, I said, "Rachel, get your dogs in hand. Some people are going to be running out the…"
I glanced, with my actual eyes, rather than with my bugs, and saw four or five men racing for the front entrance, barely noticing us as they hurled out, bees all on them.
They'd long since dropped their weapons, and now they were surrounded by two villains and over a dozen dogs.
I tried to ignore the smell, and said. "Alright, you're Merchants?"
They were a motley bunch, but one of them nodded. "Uh… yeah," he added.
"Find your own place," I said. "And tell Skidmark that he can get bent if he thinks he's going to get away with taking advantage of the chaos--"
"Bent?" one of the younger of the men asked, as his fellows tried to shush him.
"That he can fuck himself," Rachel translated.
Well, not exactly, but who was I to correct her on linguistic history?
"Oh." The one who was taking charge said, "If you try to oppose us, we'll…"
He trailed off, and Rachel said, her voice hard, and yet strangely curious, "Piss yourself?"
She was staring right at him, and even without the power of her eyes, she was a villain at the head of a group of attack dogs, staring down sodden druggies who'd been stung all over their body, including in places I'd rather not remember.
Just more bad memories to add to the pile. "Leave," I said, trying to sound forbidding. "Anyone who tries to come back will get stung everywhere."
They hurried off, and I watched them run, watched other groups see them, and felt all of the movements. I was clearing out the entire school, and because there were no capes, it wasn't really a problem. My power wasn't something that could really be fought if you weren't ready for it, if you weren't a cape.
It was that simple. Even with capes, I'd fought and done some real damage to them before without ever directly showing my face. It was only lucky that Rachel didn't view it as cowardice: it wasn't as if I hadn't also fought face to face, when it was needed.
I'd commanded her dogs to murder someone, knowing they wouldn't succeed, but knowing that's all it was.
Lung was dead now. He'd been dead for over an hour, probably. Or something.
******
We stepped in, and Rachel went towards the gym as I went to gather things. The lights were on, but dim. The generator wasn't powerful enough to quite do a very good job, and so there were flickers, as if the power was straining to fill even the rooms that it did. But still, there were lights on, at least for the moment, and Winslow had nice big windows to let more light in, if it failed.
I went from room to room.
Needles, pills, bedding… I took that. Money? They weren't going to get it back, and it wasn't much, just quarters and dollar bills, fit to be added to the pile of money we had, maybe enough for a few more lunches than we'd otherwise get. A few thousand dollars went a long way, but it wouldn't last forever.
But while I was gathering things, or pushing them aside, I ran across alcohol. Beer, Vodka, bottles of wine.
I hesitated, and then not entirely sure why I was doing it, I grabbed a few at random to take into the gym. There, I saw that Rachel was taking the dogs out to poop.
The gym was run-down enough that if they pooped in it, it wouldn't be out of place. It was a small gym, and as an auditorium it was entirely a failure, unable to fit the whole school body, and the bleachers were broken at places, so that if someone sat in the wrong place, they'd feel the whole thing groaning and creaking, threatening to give way entirely.
It wasn't even wrong, in a way, I thought, as I began to set things down. When she finally got back in with the last dog, she nodded. The dogs were fanning out, but we had all of the doors closed, including to the locker rooms. There were things to steal down there too, no doubt, but… that'd be stealing from actual students. As it was, I threw down the bedding and also the alcohol.
"What's that for?" Rachel asked.
I bit my lip, and then realized that maybe I should get out of my costume. "I was thinking, if we needed anything tonight. It's supposed to be a nightcap, or something?"
"Eh," Rachel said, which seemed to be her opinion.
I was amused, though of course I didn't smile. I'd need to keep in that mindset for a while, wouldn't I? Still, I doubted she'd object if I tried a little bit of each. I was just curious what this was all about, and when I closed my eyes at night, maybe if I was just a little tipsy I wouldn't think of Endbringers and battles. It seemed worth a try, and so I nodded, and gestured to the locker room. "I'm going to get changed, first, and then we can raid the kitchen."
"Sounds good."
Two changes of clothes, both of them jeans and T-shirts. That's all I had. I'd have to fix that soon enough, but for the moment I got dressed in the locker room.
The locker room hadn't been destroyed, but it had been altered.There were clothes still in the locker, and open lockers where all of the contents of it had spilled out on the ground, but the floor was concrete, and the lockers were too hardy to be too shaken up. So I found somewhere and I changed, only realizing at the last moment that I hadn't actually grabbed any spare bras or panties in the desperate race to get out of there.
Well, this was going to be a little gross if I didn't find some more. But surely someone would… I didn't know. I gave a mental shrug as I glanced at around, now fully dressed. No socks either, actually, so I knew that in a few days, even if I had clean changes of clothes for everything else, I was going to feel pretty gross.
I'd deal with it, I decided, going back up to see Rachel.
She was sitting on the bleachers, checking over the dogs, one by one, calling them up. A lot of them needed her care, though her powers could do it. Just some water to pour on their paws to get the glass out, and then a little bit of her power restored them. I knew she was going to be busy for quite a while to get through all of them, but that would be that.
"Gonna go grab the food!" I yelled. "It'll take a while to make it. Do you know where the cafeteria is?"
"No," Rachel said.
"Ah, well how about I lead you there?" Ladybugs weren't good for much, but they were pretty, and I had one buzz up to land on her shoulder, and then fly a little way away. "When you're ready to go, say it to the open air, and then follow that lady."
"Is it female?" she asked, frowning at it.
Of course she wouldn't be able to tell. "Male. Female ladybugs are bigger."
"Huh," Rachel said, a little confused, from what I could tell of her tone. "Got it."
I jogged down the halls, and it all felt so empty. People had been here, people had left, and some of them might be injured, though unless the shelter was far away from here, none of them were dead.
The cafeteria was as it always was. Cavernous, huge, and set down. In fact, food was still on some of the tables. There were mealtimes staggered throughout the day, I remembered. Of course there were. If you got all the students in at the same time, there'd be no room for them.
I'd have to be pretty desperate to want to eat four hour old cafeteria food, and so I glanced over at the lunch lines. It was a pretty simple system, really, and a very poor one at that. You had two or three possible orders for the main dish, and then you had sides, and you asked for them and the cafeteria ladies put it all together on a tray and shoved it at you and then went onto the next person.
It was an assembly line, and I knew for sure that all of the food was frozen. Today there had been a turkey or PB&J sandwich, a pot pie, meatloaf, or salad in a plastic tin, where it was probably shipped in. The salads were always chilled, right next to the juices and the milk, down below for kids to pick them up, to add to their meal or… well, in most cases, to not add to their meal, I thought.
The juice should be okay, I decided, reaching down and grabbing a small paper juice-box and opening it up, before taking a sip.
Ah, that hit the spot.
And there was a freezer that had still been powered by the backup generator, that had a bunch of ice-cream in it. They double or tripled the cost it'd be if you bought them at a store, but kids ate that stuff up long before they would have touched one of the iceberg salads that Emma had complained about all the way through Middle School, and which were still the only types of salads they seemed to know existed.
We'd have plenty, at least as long as the generator kept this place powered up.
But I had other game. I made my way into the back. There were places to prepare the food. Some things, even though they were mostly frozen, apparently did take prep work, even if it was mixing together frozen ingredients or the like. And I knew that some things were made fresh, and some of that might be left.
What was the back like? There was a huge freezer, a walk-in model, and there was a large refrigerator, and there were ovens after ovens after ovens, and a few microwaves, though fewer than I thought. I suppose that for safety's sake, reheating things elsewise would be smarter. And there were boilers and burners, and washing machines, and everything was a little worn down, but because it was all in gun-metal, even a little worn down didn't look that bad.
In the fridge was fruit, for a fruit salad, and a few other desserts. I needed something to carry all of it, I thought, as I looked around to see if there was any of that turkey. It hadn't been packaged slices, or at least it'd looked a little more lively than that… more something gotten from a very cheap deli. There was probably one nearby.
And there it was.
And they didn't use frozen bread, and there was no point freezing peanut butter and jelly, so there was some Jif, some Wonder Bread, and some Welsh's grape jelly. So I could make sandwiches for us too, given time.
Not a lot of time, at that, I thought, trying to get it all together in my head. The turkey for the dogs. We didn't need much, though my stomach ached as if I'd run a marathon. Stress had burned through a lot.
So, I made myself a PB&J, and ate it, as I laid out the meat, more and more of it, on a big baking tray, the better to carry it. And then I made a few more sandwiches, and got a bowl for the fruit, and by then it was all but full. That'd do for then, I decided, glancing at the freezer. If this were some real disaster, if we had to make do with what there was, we could go weeks and weeks, the two of us, on the things squirreled away here.
But we didn't need much. I carried the tray, piled with turkey and sandwiches, trying not to tilt it at all. I stopped at the cooler, and grabbed two milks, and another juice, and then grabbed two ice-cream sandwiches.
My bugs were buzzing and moving around on the outside of the school, the whole place was under my observation, and so a ladybug lifted off to let her know she was needed.
And then, just to be safe, I piled another tray up with slices of turkey, with more juices, more ice-cream. Just a secondary tray.
Rachel arrived just as I was finishing the second tray, having gotten out of her costume, or at least the mask. She looked at the meat, and I could see the hunger there.
"It's mostly for the dogs," I said. "We have enough for everyone, but… be sparing. It needs to last, at least a little."
She nodded, pulling off the gloves, and grabbing some of the turkey with her fingers. It probably wasn't very hygienic, but she at least made sure not to get her fingers over the whole thing. Instead she brought it up to her mouth and gobbled it down.
"Try the milk, to wash it down," I said, leaning in. I pressed my lips against hers. She tasted like turkey, and she returned the kiss, wrapping her arms around my head for the few moments we were kissing.
Then I pulled away, and gestured at all of that. "Plenty for you and me?"
"Should be enough."
******
The dogs were glad for the food, but even gladder for the attention. Now wasn't the evening to read a book together, not when we had so many other things to do. If I needed, I could always shower, so I didn't hesitate to play around with the dogs, once they'd eaten. I tried to check in on all of them.
First because it'd make Rachel happy, and second because I cared. I went down the mental checklist, dog by dog, each with their own personality. Sure, there were a lot of elements in common, but dogs were smart enough, and unique enough, to be really distinctive.
But running down the list left two names not there, and I winced at that feeling of loss, which would only be doubled and trebled if a person died. But it was very real, that leaden feeling.
More lost, more lost, and those lives, so very--
I went and looked at the open bottle of wine. At least they'd opened it. It was red, and I had put it up on the bleachers, out of the way of dogs, who couldn't drink alcohol.
I climbed up. "Rachel," I asked, looking down on her from above, "What's wine like? Any good?"
"Eh."
That was enough of an endorsement, I decided. "Do you want to drink with me? We have blankets now, and I can grab some pillows, and we can make an evening of it. It's… not really that time yet. But it's past noon."
It stuck to me, that saying, 'It's past noon somewhere.' Was noon important to alcohol? If it was, then I couldn't be said to be doing that much wrong. Just a sip, or maybe a gulp. Maybe two, with company.
I wondered what it had done for Dad, or what it could do. I was curious, and I was almost sixteen, and it wasn't as if I hadn't seen plenty of other people drink at around my age. Sure, some of them were Merchants… but plenty of them weren't. I wasn't exactly law abiding and…
The truth was, I knew these were excuses, but I wanted to try it, and so I was going to, and I was hoping that it'd help me sleep.
"Sure," she said, clambering up to the bleachers, but then pulling some of them out, so that a few dogs could, if they were a little adventurous, get up to us.
"We can eat with it, so that it's not as bad," I said, glancing around. The clock had fallen down, and so I couldn't know what time it was. Sometime after five? That was my guess, but that left a lot of hours in the day it could be.
"Sounds good," Rachel said.
She reached over, grabbing a bottle of what looked to be… lemonade, maybe? Hard lemonade. She gave it a sip, and made an adorable face, before passing it to me. I took bigger sip, and wrinkled my nose. This tasted like lemonade, but worse, which was a bad thing. But I gave it a second, bigger sip, and it tasted a little better once I was used to it. "Huh," I said. "This isn't such a big deal. Rachel… we're still alive."
"Yes," Rachel said, as if she understood what I meant.
"I… we lost two dogs, but we could have lost far more, if we hadn't gotten them. And we're all still here. Do you still want to be a hero with me? We could fight the Merchants, make sure they don't fuck things up?"
"I do," she said, leaning in.
She was warm, I thought, as I leaned into her. Though so was I. It was a sort of floaty warmness, and I grabbed a PB&J to eat while I passed the bottle back to her.
She took another small sip, and while I was eating I gestured over to my backpack. "We could play games, or we could… talk, you know? I mean, I watched someone die."
It was hard to swallow the peanut butter, it was like there was a lump in my throat. "I don't want to…"
"I didn't run, immediately. I looked at her. The step mom." Rachel gave an expansive shrug, letting me picture just how horribly dead the woman would have been. She looked away, but there I was, right next to her, and I pressed myself into her. Her body into mine. There wasn't that much soft about her, but there was still something comforting about just being next to her. Something firm about her, and yet I knew that there was softness to her. Gentleness. I knew her body well enough to know its weaknesses, the places I could touch that would drive her wild, and its comforts in more than just some general sense. I knew her… intimately. And stuff. I took a long chug and then set it down to grab for the wine.
I was already tipsy.
"Oh. I… my Dad. I ran away from him. I shouldn't fucking run, should I?"
"We ran from Behemoth," she said, and for a moment I was sure it was an accusation.
"We had to."
"Did you have to run from your Dad?" Rachel asked. Not as if she had made a decision, but as if she wanted to know. She looked at me with those dark eyes, and combined with the slight haze over me, already, it was helping.
"I dunno. Maybe. It just happened, and I'd do it again. But if he's dead… fuck. That's my plan. Tomorrow. I've thought about it." My words were coming quick. The wine didn't taste that good either, but it was nice and sweet in its own way. "We look for my Dad, and if we can't find him, then the next thing we gotta do is find… I remember seeing that there was this one dog shelter near Merchant territory, right?"
"Yes," Rachel said, talking far slower than I was, as she grabbed the bottle and took another one of those baby sips. She really should have a bit more. It was pretty good, once you got used to the dreamy, drifting feeling. It felt like, if I kept up the drinking, I'd finally be able to talk to her. It was that sensation of being loosed from my bonds. Like I wasn't trapped, and couldn't ever be trapped.
"Well, we go there. We offer to protect them, in exchange for letting us keep the dogs there, and then we find somewhere nearby, or maybe find somewhere in the shelter to hole up in. It's big, right?"
"Yeah, pretty big," Rachel said with a note.
"There we go!" I said, cheerfully. "Once we're there, we keep the Merchants out and figure out what we do next. How's that sound? Together."
"What if you find your Dad?"
"I make up with him, then shelter," I said. I wasn't going to go back with him, no matter what he said. Not anytime soon. "I'm not leaving you."
"Oh, good," Rachel said, sounding a little drowsy. Maybe alcohol put her to sleep?
Certainly, she was probably less of a lightweight than I bet I was, already tipsy. I reached for the bottle. Maybe a little more.
*******
"Huh, I…" I chuckled, "Really suck at this game drunk."
"Taylor," Rachel said. "Duh." She looked so amused, looking at me smugly and at most slightly tipsy. Me, on the other hand? The room wasn't spinning, that'd be a bad sign, but the world did feel like it was wobbling under me. Brutus was sniffing at the food, but Rachel kept him away, other than feeding him a little bit of the meat left.
"Am I that drunk?"
"Kinda, yeah," Rachel said. She leaned in, having parted ways with me. That wasn't a good thing. I frowned, and took another drink. It wasn't a good thing at all.
"You wanna try?" I offered. "I like watching you play. I… I wonder sometimes."
"What?"
"I mean, I'm me, and I'm all… me-like." I paused, and took a breath, feeling both happy and sad at the same time, the two emotions warring in me, occasionally broken up by the dim intercessions of the dead and the living who might be dead.
"Huh?"
"I talk a lot. And really fast. And I like video games and books and science fiction and stuff, and you don't. I don't know what you like, besides me and the dogs, really. You like meat, and you like the books I read, but…"
"I like you."
"Good," I said. "I really… really love you. I want to be your girlfriend but--"
I paused, startled that I'd just said it. Then I giggled. It was easy to just blame it on the alcohol. I could blame it on that, and just not have to think about how long I'd been trying to say it.
"Huh?" Rachel asked.
"You know… like. Official and all. I mean, I know if you wouldn't want me, but I like you a lot, and I like… being with you. And fucking you."
Rachel's eyes widened, and I realized with amusement that I barely kept from ending in a smile, that she had thought that 'being with you' was the sex. Because I usually danced around saying it outright.
But I did. I liked fucking Rachel Lindt. News at eleven! I giggled a little more, trying to cover my mouth as I did, crawling over towards her.
"Huh," she said, more thoughtfully now. "I thought we were already--"
"What? Dating? I mean, why would you think that?"
I frowned, annoyed, and reached a hand out to stroke her upper thigh a little. "But we haven't really, like…"
"What's dating?" Rachel asked. She was frowning at me.
"Giving each other gifts and going out together and… just."
"We go out for dinner all the time."
I felt thwarted, and it was annoying. She had a point, but it couldn't be that simple. Dating was a big deal, there was supposed to be some… some feeling or something when you were dating that you didn't feel when you weren't.
It wasn't fair that it was so easy for her. That she didn't get this.
I puffed out my cheeks, "Really?"
"We do," Rachel said, and now she was baffled.
"I mean, you don't want to…"
"What?"
The dogs were down there, and I suddenly wished I could just leap off the seating and be among them and not have to answer the question. "Date?"
"Uh, sure."
She just… ugh. I felt a little sick, I thought. I'd better eat some more ice-cream before I drink anything else. Something to get on my stomach, that was… good right?
"Do you wanna… right now?" I asked, trailing off, looking at her. Then I added, because maybe she didn't get it. Right? Maybe? Sure. "Fuck?"
She looked back at me, right in my eyes. Maybe it'd help a little, with forgetting. I could be very good at forgetting if only I had some practice.
"Taylor. You're drunk."
"And?" I asked. "It's not like we haven't…" I began.
Rachel shook her head, and I looked at her and wanted to know what I could say. I was starting to regret the alcohol, and how it made me feel. It wasn't making anything better, though for a time it'd seemed like it had.
Fuck, I thought, savoring the coarse word.
"No. Maybe tomorrow. I don't feel like it."
"Oh," I said.
I leaned against her, and took another small sip of the wine and put it down. Then I hugged her tight, having somehow wound up on the bleacher, laying on top of her, and tried not to let go.
******
At eight o'clock, she held my hair. I vomited, miserable and sick and far too unused to alcohol to have even tried this. This was stupid, and I shouldn't have…
Yet somehow, when I went to sleep that night, I didn't have the deaths in my mind. I was exhausted and out of it and humiliated and still slightly tipsy, but I did eventually drag myself off into sleep.
*******
The next morning, I longed to have taken back the last few hours. How did Dad ever do something like this and not hate himself in the morning?
I'm grouchy and exhausted and I suppose I've learned a lesson, somehow, because I dump the alcohol out. It didn't work as well as I hoped. Not even close.
"You wanna chill this morning?" Rachel asked. She'd been quiet, and surprisingly understanding, or at least… she hadn't said that I should have known better, even though I should have.
"No…" I said, trying not to dry heave again. All of the aspirin in the world wasn't enough. "I'm… we have to find Dad."
"Ok," she said.
"Just… give me a little bit."
"You want breakfast?" Rachel asked.
I consulted my stomach.
"No… maybe not."
Ugh.
******
A/N: And Taylor attempts her father's method of anaesthesia, only it doesn't seem to help. Next up is the hunt for Danny, and all that follows! Thanks to @NemoMarx.
When Behemoth left, for the last time, the earth shook everywhere. We were as far as we could be from the center of the fight, we'd given up on it, and from the way that the deaths seemed to peter out, that wasn't that bad of a decision. We hadn't abandoned people to die, we'd seen our way through most of the deaths, through most of the chaos, and so I didn't feel all that bad that I wasn't sticking it out.
Now what we needed to do was survive what came after. Not all the buildings would be destroyed, not even that many, but the damage was considerable even all the way to the docks, as I'd find out, and would at least take a few days to repair, at best, and weeks and months at worst.
Then, there was the aftershock. We'd been hurrying along, headed towards the docks, or at least, towards more wide-open areas where the ground wasn't broken, as the roads had been all the way around Behemoth for blocks on every side.
Nothing had fallen down this far away from him, no buildings at least. That was lucky, a bit of luck we'd need more of.
Here, at least, the buildings were more solid, but everything was shaken up and tumbled, and the roads were not built to stand up for this. No doubt even in the least affected places, the rooms would be disarrayed, and in the aftershock I almost fell, and some of the dogs did.
They screamed and kicked up a racket as we waved away dust and cursed and muttered: for all that they'd been through all of this, they were still panicked and startled.
There were fires in the distance, though I could see capes flying towards them already, and high in the sky, I could almost feel Scion's glow. Maybe he'd fix it. Maybe he'd have to, because I didn't know how much beyond my sight as still intact. The city didn't seem destroyed, but what had happened…
I could smell oil, and fire, I could smell rotting sewage, and see burst pipes, water in the streets at places, sinkholes forming. I could imagine the sounds of screams other than the barks in the distance: I could picture the corpses I'd seen made in front of me, smeared and destroyed effortlessly. I couldn't unsee them. I couldn't undo what I'd done, in choosing to take part in the fight.
Deep down I was just as worried as the dogs, but I knew my mask would hide it, as I looked over at Rachel, and said, only, as the dogs got to barking, "I think… that's probably it."
There was one last shock, and then nothing. No more names, the way I'd expect if Behemoth was really running rampant still, because surely the quake would have downed a few more capes, when combined with a fist or a foot, to finish the job. I could picture it in my mind's eye, the puddles of gore, the organs flopping out, the bodies in various states of death, but not decay: no time for decay. Fresh, ripe bodies, people who had been alive not all that long ago, and people I had known. Armsmaster, Othala, Lung: not all of their deaths I regretted, really, but I felt them all.
I had to stop, even though I'd said that it was it, that it was over, because it didn't feel over. I'd saved a few capes, and Pelter hadn't died, and neither had Velocity. I'd transported Flechette, Parian, and the others, and… and. It all felt like so little, too little, that I needed to do something else.
It was quiet on the street, but the Merchants would be out soon, I felt it in my bones as I leaned and tried to clear my mind of the horror. I couldn't stop picturing it, that was the problem. My imagination was too strong, now that it was fueled with reality, and it felt as if I were about to be shaken to pieces along with the buildings that were in the way of Behemoth.
The city had toppled, and it was fallen now, at least for the moment. And where would money come to fix all of this? Endbringer insurance wasn't… it wasn't something that always existed. The richest people, of course they had insurance to cover that, but everyone else? Plus, the earthquakes, there were insurers who would probably argue, because a person could argue anything, that they qualified as that, and not an Endbringer… and nobody had earthquake insurance. It would be like buying insurance against tornadoes in California. Or against Hurricanes in Ohio.
It'd be a mess, and mostly things wouldn't be picked up, not for months. There were cities that never recovered from an Endbringer attack, just limped along. I'd heard all of those stories and all of those minor outrages and I'd never seen it as something to do with me. It'd been bad, of course, something to be shocked about, but no more than that, because it had always been someone else.
Until suddenly we were the victims who would languish. The world was wide, and there were so many cities and potential targets that you just started to hope they'd never get around to you before someone figured out some way to kill them, or stop them.
Or do something other than fight again and again.
We'd saved shelters full of people. I said we as if I'd been doing that, but… still. It was something, but in all that time it hadn't seemed like we'd ever stood a chance of destroying the monster.
That was a thought that could leave you cold and shivering at night.
And the thought of night brought me back up. "Rachel, we need somewhere to sleep." It wasn't night yet, not even close. The whole fight had been… I wasn't even sure. I didn't have a watch, but there were still hours left until the sun dipped, and hours still, this close to summer, until it was dark out.
But we also had no home at all. I knew there would be shelters, or camps that would be set up, for people who were displaced, who couldn't go back to their homes… which would be a large chunk of the entire population, because even the houses that weren't down were at least unsafe enough to raise eyebrows.
That was all things I considered at the time, before I thought about what buildings would be standing at all. We didn't need structural integrity, after all. I breathed in and out as the idea slowly came to me. It wouldn't be occupied, and there would be plenty of room, and there was likely food still frozen, if you were willing to tolerate it, and what choice did I have?
The very idea turned my stomach, actually, but another element of it felt almost… fitting. It was payback for what they'd done.
I grit my teeth and said. "I know where that is?"
"You do?" Rachel asked. She looked at me, and I wondered what she was thinking. I'd ordered her around, and I wondered if that was okay, if she'd trusted me. I knew if she'd thrown her dogs at Behemoth, it would have been a disaster for her. But it had to gall her, it had to go against everything she'd acted like before. She threw herself directly at targets and enemies, she didn't back down, she just kept on pressing with more force until it worked, and I didn't even blame her for it.
It'd worked for her before, so of course she'd try it again.
Could she really have trusted me that much? That was another reason I was trembling, some distant fear that I'd offended her, and she'd let me know at the first safe moment. Because I knew what would have happened if Lisa tried to give her an order like that, or anyone else, no matter how well meaning. I didn't trust it, the idea that I was…
I don't know what I didn't trust, just that I didn't trust in it.
It was a foolish sort of mindset, but it was mine. "Yes. You know Winslow?"
"The school?" she asked, and I didn't smile beneath my mask, but if I was in someone else's company, I would have.
"Yeah, the school. Everyone's gone from it to get into a shelter," I said. "There's a few somewhat near the school, but even if they get out of it right now, they're not going back to school." Sure, the school, like most public buildings, had to partially Endbringer proof at least a few parts of themselves, so it was probably standing… more or less. But the roads wouldn't be safe.
I nodded and stretched my hand out, to gesture at the dogs, who were all gathered around, clearly not sure what was happening next. But like sheep following the good shepherd, they trusted in Rachel to see them through, even if no doubt they couldn't have thought of it that way.
"And there's room," I added, now that she was looking at the dogs. "For all of them. No dog food, but there's meat, and there's other stuff. It won't be great for them, but one night, and then we can find…" I trailed off, thinking. "A dog shelter, or something. To… take over. Or make use of. But I don't know where one is now, and I just want to be somewhere, and know where I'm going."
It was a cry from the heart, and Rachel nodded after a very long moment. Or it felt like that, but I knew I was racing, weary and exhausted, for any port in a storm: a metaphor that might have meant more if it was Leviathan who'd attacked.
"It wasn't in the path of this," I said, not sure which would have been worse. I couldn't imagine worse happening to my city than what had happened here. "We should get rid of the armbands, though."
Rachel reached over and took hers off, and then I took mine off. I looked at them for a moment, wondering if I should have explained myself to yet another person.
But no, it wasn't needed.
The battle was over, and it wasn't any of their business where I was.
I tossed it aside. I took a breath. It felt almost final in a way, though I knew that them and I weren't done, we'd never be as long as I was fighting crime and so were they. But I'd worn their armband, and now I wasn't wearing it.
Rachel stepped forward, and pushed her mask out of the way. "Taylor…" she began. Why was she hesitating.
"Yes?"
"Your Dad," she said. It was as if she were forcing herself to say the words, or as if she thought I needed to hear them. I looked in her face, rough and sweaty. She looked like a mess, red in the face, and not from blushing. Her lips were drawn taut, her thick nose snorting a little as she breathed.
Her eyes were dark and I stared into them for a moment, struck again. The pictures in my head faded away for a moment, because how could you look at her and not see anything else? Even if you weren't head over heels and ignoring her every flaw, there was something striking about her, even if it wasn't attracted. About the way she stared at you. She looked at you and only you with all of her might, as if she had laser vision and was going to do something, when she was angry, or as if she wanted X-ray vision when she wanted to know what you were up to. I knew that it wasn't just the eyes.
There were other features that probably told me her moods, because eyes were just eyes, after all, but it's the eyes I noticed, that my conscious mind interpreted, using all of those unconscious cues. And she trusted me, and wasn't angry at me, or at least, no more than a little frustrated. That's what her face told me, as open as a…
My mind grasped book first, but were books open? The best ones tested you, they had secret meanings that Mom had unveiled and uncovered. They surprised you. Rachel could, sometimes, but not in the same way. She had her own special way.
"You okay?"
Was I staring? Of course I had been. "No," I admitted. "Not after… after all of that. Your dogs."
The pain was real and deep and wrenched, her teeth gritting at that, as she almost growled. "They…"
"We'll protect the others, and, I think." I stopped, not sure what I was about to promise. "I won't forget them. I won't let anyone forget them," I said. I had no idea how to do it, just the odd certainty that I'd definitely do it.
"Good," Rachel said.
"I'm going to gather the bugs, so that we'll know if anyone is coming to attack us. We need to hurry, though. There's plenty of time, but I'd rather just… lay around. I know there are couches in the teacher's lounge, and there's pillows in this one teacher's classroom. She uses them to take naps."
One time a kid had stuck a blunt in her mouth, and then lit it without her waking up. Then, according to her, slipped a tiny baggie of coke into her pants pocket. The administration had believed it, because who carried illegal drugs in their pocket when they went to school as a teacher?
It was a stupid frame-up, which was entirely typical of the class of criminals and scum that haunted Winslow at times.
"Okay," Rachel said, pulling her mask back on.
*******
Many bugs had died, but enough survived, and I gathered them about me as we went, spreading them out, creating the net, the web that I was used to having. They'd done little good, except tell me what I already knew about the fight. But now they were vital. We'd wasted a little time going south, and now we were going to have to wind our way through the streets, whose cracks and tilts made it look drunken, until at last we got to Winslow.
People were moving, people were hiding. There was a shelter we passed on the way to Winslow, and then another. They could only hold so many people, but they weren't as air-tight as they should have been. Heck, they were barely as water-tight as they'd have needed to be, considering I managed to slip bugs in. In one of the shelters, the doors were opened, as if to get in air.
The people were crowded together, stinking, exhausted, clearly out of it, clearly in no mood to stumble out just yet. The food there would last them for up to a week, in theory, though I had a feeling that both of the shelters I passed were over-capacity.
My Dad was in neither of them, that much I managed to figure out after a few minutes of careful consideration. We weren't riding on the dogs, but just pacing along leisurely. Or so it appeared. Rachel was watching all of them, commanding them to stay and not stray, to not chase the smells, to follow me, at the lead, and yet only half there, not appreciating the scenery, what little there was of it, but anticipating the road ahead.
Now and then, I saw flickers of people moving, running through alleys. Some people were out and about, and I had to assume they were criminals, but I didn't want to hit them until I was sure, and I didn't care enough to stop and start some little fight blocks away.
The silence stretched between us, and I wanted to talk to break it, but again I was too busy with the bugs, seeing to our safety.
My bugs, the dogs, we had many lines of defense, and so I should have felt safer. But the people out and about, they were going to be looting. It was inevitable. Heck, what we were doing was probably looting in a sense. Definitely, it wasn't the prettiest of actions, but the food would go to waste, and we weren't going to stay more than one night, so I didn't feel as bad as I should have.
Once we found somewhere to stay for good, we could be heroes, we could stretch ourselves out and get comfortable and make up for any wrongdoings.
It wouldn't be hard, I thought, looking at Rachel. Or maybe it would be, but I knew that she could do it. We could do it, for that matter.
Power was another thing that was down, I thought, probably in huge chunks of the city, one way or another, with all of the disarray. But Rachel and I were used to not having power, to going to sleep when it got dark, and I knew the school had a backup generator. Part of disaster prep that had never really paid off.
There'd been a hurricane that had hit Brockton Bay once, decades ago. That's when the generator was from, before capes even were around, if I remembered its history right. Then when capes and Endbringers had come, they'd become even more common and better made.
Little facts like that rattled around in my brain, the result of education and the kind of mind that could remember the best character build in Xeno-War 2. Little details just stuck to me, sometimes, even when they weren't important.
Greg was even better for little details, and I hoped he was… unhurt at best, but if not, at least alive.
As I approached the school, I began to realize a few things. First, it was not in the best of conditions. Nothing had collapsed, but the parking lot was cracked all over, the bugs seeing that detail rather clearly. And the second floor of the school was now full of holes in some places, the structure wrecked enough that I wouldn't want to step on it… and in a few of the worst cared for classrooms, the roof had caved in altogether.
The bottom floor, though, seemed relatively intact, even if the inside was possibly a mess of glass. I knew where a janitor's closet was, and if we could just step over it, we could brush it all out of the way. We were already having to do something like that with the streets, and I knew that even moving at all was a danger.
Still, the school was standing, and so were most of the buildings, including the gym. So that first piece of news, while not great, wasn't a disaster either. It was something that I could work with, which was more than could be said for a lot of the possible outcomes.
The other thing I realized was that it wasn't empty. In the school, spread out in handfuls and clumps, were people. Some of them smelled of alcohol, and others were in the nurse's office, no doubt raiding it for anything that could be made into drugs. My bugs could smell all sorts of things that added up to drugs and alcohol and poverty. Flashes of their appearance--men and women both--seemed to indicate that these weren't members of the E88 (none of the righ tattoos, and too many non-whites among them), except for one cluster in a far building, which was away from the rest, and no doubt unaware, since they were in one of the 'mobile classrooms' around back.
So, the Merchants, and a few members of the E88, had busted into school to loot and plunder. I couldn't guess at the ages of everyone, even with bugs flying around giving me an impression of some general details.
Except, I could tell at least a cluster of them were students from our school that were part of the Merchants. I recognized them, at least vaguely, through the senses of the bugs.
Contrary to hopes, it took a long time to really build up a picture with bugs, because of how much ground there was to cover, and how limited their senses were, but by the time we were half a block away, in sight of the school, I knew where they are were, and I had figured out which of them were drunk or high, and which were armed.
I wondered if any of them were drowning their pain, the way Dad might have been. I had no idea either way, except that some of them were… having intercourse, and that I was keeping my bugs away from these fine examples of future teen pregnancies.
"Rachel," I said, as we got closer. "There are some Merchants in there. We should take them out."
"Yeah," she said. If only I could send them a message from here? But I could attack them, and as I gathered together wasps and bees and fire ants, and stinging flies, I thought of something I could do.
I tried to find the biggest clump of them, ten people, and then I carefully positioned the bugs all around the room, while they were too busy talking.
"Man, this fucking place," a man said, balding, pale skinned. "How the fuck'd you survive being here all day?"
"Hell if I know," a girl about my age said with a shrug. I knew her, she was in my math class, actually. She had sat in the back and glowered at the wall, clearly here only because she was made to be.
Little conversations, fragments of people's lives. I tried to arrange the bugs on the wall, slowly but surely, to form the words 'Get Out' but they noticed them too soon, and it was hard to drag all the bugs into the right perspective, because I couldn't look at them from a distance. All of their senses didn't tell me anything about how well the bugs were forming the words on the wall, but I hoped it at least looked like words were forming--
"The fuck!" one guy yelled, drawing his gun. The wasps were on him in a moment, and then on all the rest a moment later.
"Taylor?" Rachel asked.
"Sorry, I'm in a fight," I said. "We should be able to just stroll in, the front door's been forced open."
"In a fight?" Rachel asked.
"Yeah, driving them out."
Not just that group. I started my bugs to biting and swarming all over people, wishing I could somehow communicate with my victims, to tell them what they could do to make it stop. I wasn't going to kill anyone, I just needed them out of there. So I let the flies stop biting when one of them ran out of the room. Any of the rooms, including the gym, which doubled as the auditorium.
I took a breath, and then once all of them were out of the room, I had the flies buzz over the entrance back in, and then began to bite and sting them again. It was like herding sheep, I thought, as we walked up to the front doors. I could feel some of the groups approach them.
I rewarded going towards the exit, and not just the front exit, with less stinging, but then if they turned back to help their friends, then I punished them for it. It was all so automatic and easy, just total control without even trying. It wasn't a fight, really.
They couldn't shoot at the bugs, and even as a small group of them headed for the front entrance, I said, "Rachel, get your dogs in hand. Some people are going to be running out the…"
I glanced, with my actual eyes, rather than with my bugs, and saw four or five men racing for the front entrance, barely noticing us as they hurled out, bees all on them.
They'd long since dropped their weapons, and now they were surrounded by two villains and over a dozen dogs.
I tried to ignore the smell, and said. "Alright, you're Merchants?"
They were a motley bunch, but one of them nodded. "Uh… yeah," he added.
"Find your own place," I said. "And tell Skidmark that he can get bent if he thinks he's going to get away with taking advantage of the chaos--"
"Bent?" one of the younger of the men asked, as his fellows tried to shush him.
"That he can fuck himself," Rachel translated.
Well, not exactly, but who was I to correct her on linguistic history?
"Oh." The one who was taking charge said, "If you try to oppose us, we'll…"
He trailed off, and Rachel said, her voice hard, and yet strangely curious, "Piss yourself?"
She was staring right at him, and even without the power of her eyes, she was a villain at the head of a group of attack dogs, staring down sodden druggies who'd been stung all over their body, including in places I'd rather not remember.
Just more bad memories to add to the pile. "Leave," I said, trying to sound forbidding. "Anyone who tries to come back will get stung everywhere."
They hurried off, and I watched them run, watched other groups see them, and felt all of the movements. I was clearing out the entire school, and because there were no capes, it wasn't really a problem. My power wasn't something that could really be fought if you weren't ready for it, if you weren't a cape.
It was that simple. Even with capes, I'd fought and done some real damage to them before without ever directly showing my face. It was only lucky that Rachel didn't view it as cowardice: it wasn't as if I hadn't also fought face to face, when it was needed.
I'd commanded her dogs to murder someone, knowing they wouldn't succeed, but knowing that's all it was.
Lung was dead now. He'd been dead for over an hour, probably. Or something.
******
We stepped in, and Rachel went towards the gym as I went to gather things. The lights were on, but dim. The generator wasn't powerful enough to quite do a very good job, and so there were flickers, as if the power was straining to fill even the rooms that it did. But still, there were lights on, at least for the moment, and Winslow had nice big windows to let more light in, if it failed.
I went from room to room.
Needles, pills, bedding… I took that. Money? They weren't going to get it back, and it wasn't much, just quarters and dollar bills, fit to be added to the pile of money we had, maybe enough for a few more lunches than we'd otherwise get. A few thousand dollars went a long way, but it wouldn't last forever.
But while I was gathering things, or pushing them aside, I ran across alcohol. Beer, Vodka, bottles of wine.
I hesitated, and then not entirely sure why I was doing it, I grabbed a few at random to take into the gym. There, I saw that Rachel was taking the dogs out to poop.
The gym was run-down enough that if they pooped in it, it wouldn't be out of place. It was a small gym, and as an auditorium it was entirely a failure, unable to fit the whole school body, and the bleachers were broken at places, so that if someone sat in the wrong place, they'd feel the whole thing groaning and creaking, threatening to give way entirely.
It wasn't even wrong, in a way, I thought, as I began to set things down. When she finally got back in with the last dog, she nodded. The dogs were fanning out, but we had all of the doors closed, including to the locker rooms. There were things to steal down there too, no doubt, but… that'd be stealing from actual students. As it was, I threw down the bedding and also the alcohol.
"What's that for?" Rachel asked.
I bit my lip, and then realized that maybe I should get out of my costume. "I was thinking, if we needed anything tonight. It's supposed to be a nightcap, or something?"
"Eh," Rachel said, which seemed to be her opinion.
I was amused, though of course I didn't smile. I'd need to keep in that mindset for a while, wouldn't I? Still, I doubted she'd object if I tried a little bit of each. I was just curious what this was all about, and when I closed my eyes at night, maybe if I was just a little tipsy I wouldn't think of Endbringers and battles. It seemed worth a try, and so I nodded, and gestured to the locker room. "I'm going to get changed, first, and then we can raid the kitchen."
"Sounds good."
Two changes of clothes, both of them jeans and T-shirts. That's all I had. I'd have to fix that soon enough, but for the moment I got dressed in the locker room.
The locker room hadn't been destroyed, but it had been altered.There were clothes still in the locker, and open lockers where all of the contents of it had spilled out on the ground, but the floor was concrete, and the lockers were too hardy to be too shaken up. So I found somewhere and I changed, only realizing at the last moment that I hadn't actually grabbed any spare bras or panties in the desperate race to get out of there.
Well, this was going to be a little gross if I didn't find some more. But surely someone would… I didn't know. I gave a mental shrug as I glanced at around, now fully dressed. No socks either, actually, so I knew that in a few days, even if I had clean changes of clothes for everything else, I was going to feel pretty gross.
I'd deal with it, I decided, going back up to see Rachel.
She was sitting on the bleachers, checking over the dogs, one by one, calling them up. A lot of them needed her care, though her powers could do it. Just some water to pour on their paws to get the glass out, and then a little bit of her power restored them. I knew she was going to be busy for quite a while to get through all of them, but that would be that.
"Gonna go grab the food!" I yelled. "It'll take a while to make it. Do you know where the cafeteria is?"
"No," Rachel said.
"Ah, well how about I lead you there?" Ladybugs weren't good for much, but they were pretty, and I had one buzz up to land on her shoulder, and then fly a little way away. "When you're ready to go, say it to the open air, and then follow that lady."
"Is it female?" she asked, frowning at it.
Of course she wouldn't be able to tell. "Male. Female ladybugs are bigger."
"Huh," Rachel said, a little confused, from what I could tell of her tone. "Got it."
I jogged down the halls, and it all felt so empty. People had been here, people had left, and some of them might be injured, though unless the shelter was far away from here, none of them were dead.
The cafeteria was as it always was. Cavernous, huge, and set down. In fact, food was still on some of the tables. There were mealtimes staggered throughout the day, I remembered. Of course there were. If you got all the students in at the same time, there'd be no room for them.
I'd have to be pretty desperate to want to eat four hour old cafeteria food, and so I glanced over at the lunch lines. It was a pretty simple system, really, and a very poor one at that. You had two or three possible orders for the main dish, and then you had sides, and you asked for them and the cafeteria ladies put it all together on a tray and shoved it at you and then went onto the next person.
It was an assembly line, and I knew for sure that all of the food was frozen. Today there had been a turkey or PB&J sandwich, a pot pie, meatloaf, or salad in a plastic tin, where it was probably shipped in. The salads were always chilled, right next to the juices and the milk, down below for kids to pick them up, to add to their meal or… well, in most cases, to not add to their meal, I thought.
The juice should be okay, I decided, reaching down and grabbing a small paper juice-box and opening it up, before taking a sip.
Ah, that hit the spot.
And there was a freezer that had still been powered by the backup generator, that had a bunch of ice-cream in it. They double or tripled the cost it'd be if you bought them at a store, but kids ate that stuff up long before they would have touched one of the iceberg salads that Emma had complained about all the way through Middle School, and which were still the only types of salads they seemed to know existed.
We'd have plenty, at least as long as the generator kept this place powered up.
But I had other game. I made my way into the back. There were places to prepare the food. Some things, even though they were mostly frozen, apparently did take prep work, even if it was mixing together frozen ingredients or the like. And I knew that some things were made fresh, and some of that might be left.
What was the back like? There was a huge freezer, a walk-in model, and there was a large refrigerator, and there were ovens after ovens after ovens, and a few microwaves, though fewer than I thought. I suppose that for safety's sake, reheating things elsewise would be smarter. And there were boilers and burners, and washing machines, and everything was a little worn down, but because it was all in gun-metal, even a little worn down didn't look that bad.
In the fridge was fruit, for a fruit salad, and a few other desserts. I needed something to carry all of it, I thought, as I looked around to see if there was any of that turkey. It hadn't been packaged slices, or at least it'd looked a little more lively than that… more something gotten from a very cheap deli. There was probably one nearby.
And there it was.
And they didn't use frozen bread, and there was no point freezing peanut butter and jelly, so there was some Jif, some Wonder Bread, and some Welsh's grape jelly. So I could make sandwiches for us too, given time.
Not a lot of time, at that, I thought, trying to get it all together in my head. The turkey for the dogs. We didn't need much, though my stomach ached as if I'd run a marathon. Stress had burned through a lot.
So, I made myself a PB&J, and ate it, as I laid out the meat, more and more of it, on a big baking tray, the better to carry it. And then I made a few more sandwiches, and got a bowl for the fruit, and by then it was all but full. That'd do for then, I decided, glancing at the freezer. If this were some real disaster, if we had to make do with what there was, we could go weeks and weeks, the two of us, on the things squirreled away here.
But we didn't need much. I carried the tray, piled with turkey and sandwiches, trying not to tilt it at all. I stopped at the cooler, and grabbed two milks, and another juice, and then grabbed two ice-cream sandwiches.
My bugs were buzzing and moving around on the outside of the school, the whole place was under my observation, and so a ladybug lifted off to let her know she was needed.
And then, just to be safe, I piled another tray up with slices of turkey, with more juices, more ice-cream. Just a secondary tray.
Rachel arrived just as I was finishing the second tray, having gotten out of her costume, or at least the mask. She looked at the meat, and I could see the hunger there.
"It's mostly for the dogs," I said. "We have enough for everyone, but… be sparing. It needs to last, at least a little."
She nodded, pulling off the gloves, and grabbing some of the turkey with her fingers. It probably wasn't very hygienic, but she at least made sure not to get her fingers over the whole thing. Instead she brought it up to her mouth and gobbled it down.
"Try the milk, to wash it down," I said, leaning in. I pressed my lips against hers. She tasted like turkey, and she returned the kiss, wrapping her arms around my head for the few moments we were kissing.
Then I pulled away, and gestured at all of that. "Plenty for you and me?"
"Should be enough."
******
The dogs were glad for the food, but even gladder for the attention. Now wasn't the evening to read a book together, not when we had so many other things to do. If I needed, I could always shower, so I didn't hesitate to play around with the dogs, once they'd eaten. I tried to check in on all of them.
First because it'd make Rachel happy, and second because I cared. I went down the mental checklist, dog by dog, each with their own personality. Sure, there were a lot of elements in common, but dogs were smart enough, and unique enough, to be really distinctive.
But running down the list left two names not there, and I winced at that feeling of loss, which would only be doubled and trebled if a person died. But it was very real, that leaden feeling.
More lost, more lost, and those lives, so very--
I went and looked at the open bottle of wine. At least they'd opened it. It was red, and I had put it up on the bleachers, out of the way of dogs, who couldn't drink alcohol.
I climbed up. "Rachel," I asked, looking down on her from above, "What's wine like? Any good?"
"Eh."
That was enough of an endorsement, I decided. "Do you want to drink with me? We have blankets now, and I can grab some pillows, and we can make an evening of it. It's… not really that time yet. But it's past noon."
It stuck to me, that saying, 'It's past noon somewhere.' Was noon important to alcohol? If it was, then I couldn't be said to be doing that much wrong. Just a sip, or maybe a gulp. Maybe two, with company.
I wondered what it had done for Dad, or what it could do. I was curious, and I was almost sixteen, and it wasn't as if I hadn't seen plenty of other people drink at around my age. Sure, some of them were Merchants… but plenty of them weren't. I wasn't exactly law abiding and…
The truth was, I knew these were excuses, but I wanted to try it, and so I was going to, and I was hoping that it'd help me sleep.
"Sure," she said, clambering up to the bleachers, but then pulling some of them out, so that a few dogs could, if they were a little adventurous, get up to us.
"We can eat with it, so that it's not as bad," I said, glancing around. The clock had fallen down, and so I couldn't know what time it was. Sometime after five? That was my guess, but that left a lot of hours in the day it could be.
"Sounds good," Rachel said.
She reached over, grabbing a bottle of what looked to be… lemonade, maybe? Hard lemonade. She gave it a sip, and made an adorable face, before passing it to me. I took bigger sip, and wrinkled my nose. This tasted like lemonade, but worse, which was a bad thing. But I gave it a second, bigger sip, and it tasted a little better once I was used to it. "Huh," I said. "This isn't such a big deal. Rachel… we're still alive."
"Yes," Rachel said, as if she understood what I meant.
"I… we lost two dogs, but we could have lost far more, if we hadn't gotten them. And we're all still here. Do you still want to be a hero with me? We could fight the Merchants, make sure they don't fuck things up?"
"I do," she said, leaning in.
She was warm, I thought, as I leaned into her. Though so was I. It was a sort of floaty warmness, and I grabbed a PB&J to eat while I passed the bottle back to her.
She took another small sip, and while I was eating I gestured over to my backpack. "We could play games, or we could… talk, you know? I mean, I watched someone die."
It was hard to swallow the peanut butter, it was like there was a lump in my throat. "I don't want to…"
"I didn't run, immediately. I looked at her. The step mom." Rachel gave an expansive shrug, letting me picture just how horribly dead the woman would have been. She looked away, but there I was, right next to her, and I pressed myself into her. Her body into mine. There wasn't that much soft about her, but there was still something comforting about just being next to her. Something firm about her, and yet I knew that there was softness to her. Gentleness. I knew her body well enough to know its weaknesses, the places I could touch that would drive her wild, and its comforts in more than just some general sense. I knew her… intimately. And stuff. I took a long chug and then set it down to grab for the wine.
I was already tipsy.
"Oh. I… my Dad. I ran away from him. I shouldn't fucking run, should I?"
"We ran from Behemoth," she said, and for a moment I was sure it was an accusation.
"We had to."
"Did you have to run from your Dad?" Rachel asked. Not as if she had made a decision, but as if she wanted to know. She looked at me with those dark eyes, and combined with the slight haze over me, already, it was helping.
"I dunno. Maybe. It just happened, and I'd do it again. But if he's dead… fuck. That's my plan. Tomorrow. I've thought about it." My words were coming quick. The wine didn't taste that good either, but it was nice and sweet in its own way. "We look for my Dad, and if we can't find him, then the next thing we gotta do is find… I remember seeing that there was this one dog shelter near Merchant territory, right?"
"Yes," Rachel said, talking far slower than I was, as she grabbed the bottle and took another one of those baby sips. She really should have a bit more. It was pretty good, once you got used to the dreamy, drifting feeling. It felt like, if I kept up the drinking, I'd finally be able to talk to her. It was that sensation of being loosed from my bonds. Like I wasn't trapped, and couldn't ever be trapped.
"Well, we go there. We offer to protect them, in exchange for letting us keep the dogs there, and then we find somewhere nearby, or maybe find somewhere in the shelter to hole up in. It's big, right?"
"Yeah, pretty big," Rachel said with a note.
"There we go!" I said, cheerfully. "Once we're there, we keep the Merchants out and figure out what we do next. How's that sound? Together."
"What if you find your Dad?"
"I make up with him, then shelter," I said. I wasn't going to go back with him, no matter what he said. Not anytime soon. "I'm not leaving you."
"Oh, good," Rachel said, sounding a little drowsy. Maybe alcohol put her to sleep?
Certainly, she was probably less of a lightweight than I bet I was, already tipsy. I reached for the bottle. Maybe a little more.
*******
"Huh, I…" I chuckled, "Really suck at this game drunk."
"Taylor," Rachel said. "Duh." She looked so amused, looking at me smugly and at most slightly tipsy. Me, on the other hand? The room wasn't spinning, that'd be a bad sign, but the world did feel like it was wobbling under me. Brutus was sniffing at the food, but Rachel kept him away, other than feeding him a little bit of the meat left.
"Am I that drunk?"
"Kinda, yeah," Rachel said. She leaned in, having parted ways with me. That wasn't a good thing. I frowned, and took another drink. It wasn't a good thing at all.
"You wanna try?" I offered. "I like watching you play. I… I wonder sometimes."
"What?"
"I mean, I'm me, and I'm all… me-like." I paused, and took a breath, feeling both happy and sad at the same time, the two emotions warring in me, occasionally broken up by the dim intercessions of the dead and the living who might be dead.
"Huh?"
"I talk a lot. And really fast. And I like video games and books and science fiction and stuff, and you don't. I don't know what you like, besides me and the dogs, really. You like meat, and you like the books I read, but…"
"I like you."
"Good," I said. "I really… really love you. I want to be your girlfriend but--"
I paused, startled that I'd just said it. Then I giggled. It was easy to just blame it on the alcohol. I could blame it on that, and just not have to think about how long I'd been trying to say it.
"Huh?" Rachel asked.
"You know… like. Official and all. I mean, I know if you wouldn't want me, but I like you a lot, and I like… being with you. And fucking you."
Rachel's eyes widened, and I realized with amusement that I barely kept from ending in a smile, that she had thought that 'being with you' was the sex. Because I usually danced around saying it outright.
But I did. I liked fucking Rachel Lindt. News at eleven! I giggled a little more, trying to cover my mouth as I did, crawling over towards her.
"Huh," she said, more thoughtfully now. "I thought we were already--"
"What? Dating? I mean, why would you think that?"
I frowned, annoyed, and reached a hand out to stroke her upper thigh a little. "But we haven't really, like…"
"What's dating?" Rachel asked. She was frowning at me.
"Giving each other gifts and going out together and… just."
"We go out for dinner all the time."
I felt thwarted, and it was annoying. She had a point, but it couldn't be that simple. Dating was a big deal, there was supposed to be some… some feeling or something when you were dating that you didn't feel when you weren't.
It wasn't fair that it was so easy for her. That she didn't get this.
I puffed out my cheeks, "Really?"
"We do," Rachel said, and now she was baffled.
"I mean, you don't want to…"
"What?"
The dogs were down there, and I suddenly wished I could just leap off the seating and be among them and not have to answer the question. "Date?"
"Uh, sure."
She just… ugh. I felt a little sick, I thought. I'd better eat some more ice-cream before I drink anything else. Something to get on my stomach, that was… good right?
"Do you wanna… right now?" I asked, trailing off, looking at her. Then I added, because maybe she didn't get it. Right? Maybe? Sure. "Fuck?"
She looked back at me, right in my eyes. Maybe it'd help a little, with forgetting. I could be very good at forgetting if only I had some practice.
"Taylor. You're drunk."
"And?" I asked. "It's not like we haven't…" I began.
Rachel shook her head, and I looked at her and wanted to know what I could say. I was starting to regret the alcohol, and how it made me feel. It wasn't making anything better, though for a time it'd seemed like it had.
Fuck, I thought, savoring the coarse word.
"No. Maybe tomorrow. I don't feel like it."
"Oh," I said.
I leaned against her, and took another small sip of the wine and put it down. Then I hugged her tight, having somehow wound up on the bleacher, laying on top of her, and tried not to let go.
******
At eight o'clock, she held my hair. I vomited, miserable and sick and far too unused to alcohol to have even tried this. This was stupid, and I shouldn't have…
Yet somehow, when I went to sleep that night, I didn't have the deaths in my mind. I was exhausted and out of it and humiliated and still slightly tipsy, but I did eventually drag myself off into sleep.
*******
The next morning, I longed to have taken back the last few hours. How did Dad ever do something like this and not hate himself in the morning?
I'm grouchy and exhausted and I suppose I've learned a lesson, somehow, because I dump the alcohol out. It didn't work as well as I hoped. Not even close.
"You wanna chill this morning?" Rachel asked. She'd been quiet, and surprisingly understanding, or at least… she hadn't said that I should have known better, even though I should have.
"No…" I said, trying not to dry heave again. All of the aspirin in the world wasn't enough. "I'm… we have to find Dad."
"Ok," she said.
"Just… give me a little bit."
"You want breakfast?" Rachel asked.
I consulted my stomach.
"No… maybe not."
Ugh.
******
A/N: And Taylor attempts her father's method of anaesthesia, only it doesn't seem to help. Next up is the hunt for Danny, and all that follows! Thanks to @NemoMarx.
- Location
- ⇙
Rachel's great and Taylor should know better than getting drunk on the Merchants' leftovers.
True Love.
- Location
- Somewhere!
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Taylor, being a hypocrite? It's more likely than you'd think!
Night_stalker
Slava Ukraini!
- Pronouns
- He/Him
And there was probably much rejoicing.
And you were doing high risk job. USAR, after all.
Nor really, anything serious.
Nah, there's a kitten in Madison he needs to get out of a tree first.
Yeah, but did anything change about Brockton?
Oh goody! Stress relief items!
Rather wise investment.
And then we have Madrid.
Assuming they didn't cut corners....
Well, for a certain definition of the word, there's meat. Probably has Lunchlady Doris working in the cafeteria.
Nah, you do need essentials.
Only one? New England does get hurricanes more often then that.
"Weird, I'm tasting metal and vomiting a lot. All in the past hour, no less. Maybe I got too close to Fugly Bobs again?"
What loot and plunder? It's Winslow, place isn't even worth attacking.
Teacher's Lounge?
Or even Winslow cafe food. I mean, if nothing else, it makes lots of other stuff look edible by comparison....
Yeah, eat that stuff ASAP. Gennie'll be drained rapidly keeping it all cold.
Knowing the dogs, probably a pretty even mix, actually.
Counterpoint, one of my boss's dogs keeps getting herself stuck in a area she has issues getting out of.
Except for that one doG who really likes sake.
Yes.
Also, weird timing, my boss's oldest dog.... has bone cancer. Badly enough she's got weeks, and we aren't really doing treatment.
- Location
- Somewhere!
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Always hard. I hope your boss is there at the end, holding her. It was a comfort to me to do that.
Night_stalker
Slava Ukraini!
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Might be, if we have to end it this week, she'll be in Milwaukee, which would make things hard.
Always hard. I hope your boss is there at the end, holding her. It was a comfort to me to do that.
Also, not the same dog that gets herself stuck.
- Location
- United States
Solid chapter. I think it was necessary to have a touching of bases with Taylor and Rachel. I really wanted to see some other interactions with other capes and people right after the End-bringer attack, but I guess that will be covered in another chapter. I want to see how they swing into being Heros after everything without drifting into "Warlord" territory by staking out and protecting territory. Really looking forward to future interactions between them and the Protectorate, other Villain groups and people like Emma and Greg.
I feel like maybe other people would have tried to go to the school for shelter if their house had fallen. But our pair having not disturbances in the night could be attributed to rumors that two 'villains' had set up inside. And her bugs covering the outside of the building. I wouldn't go into a place where the doors were swarming with bees.
I enjoyed the awkward, stumbling discussion about dating between Rachel and Taylor. Avoided feeling too convenient and easy even if that's also kinda what I wanted? Basically it feels realistic, in a good way.
This chapter was a good cooling off after Behemoth, looking forward to more!
I feel like maybe other people would have tried to go to the school for shelter if their house had fallen. But our pair having not disturbances in the night could be attributed to rumors that two 'villains' had set up inside. And her bugs covering the outside of the building. I wouldn't go into a place where the doors were swarming with bees.
I enjoyed the awkward, stumbling discussion about dating between Rachel and Taylor. Avoided feeling too convenient and easy even if that's also kinda what I wanted? Basically it feels realistic, in a good way.
This chapter was a good cooling off after Behemoth, looking forward to more!
Maybe when you're not tipsy, you can just tell Rachel that you wanna be her mate........that'd straighten everything out.rofl:
Wondering what Danny is thinking. Wondering how Taylor is going to get their lil team some legit work.
Wondering how I'm gonna make it to the next update, lol.:lol
rofl:Wondering what Danny is thinking. Wondering how Taylor is going to get their lil team some legit work.
Wondering how I'm gonna make it to the next update, lol.
:lol
- Pronouns
- They/Them
Hey, it's not like Rachel is going to get Taylor pregnant!
- Location
- Australia
Taylor: "Let's do it on Blackwell's desk!"
Rachel: "Why? The floor's more comfortable."
Taylor: "Good point. We'll do it on the floor and say we did it on the desk."
Rachel: "You're weird."
- Location
- United States
Not for lack of effort.
Vindictus
XENO
- Location
- Texas
No, see, it's fine, Rae has approximately zero chance of getting Taylor pregnant, therefore she won't be an example of teenage pregnancy.
- Pronouns
- They/Them
There's a lot I could say, but this chapter should speak for itself, honestly? As far as it goes, the thing to note is that a lot of people were still in shelters for that first night. And of course, the capes that didn't leave before the fight was officially over were often clogging the hospitals or dealing with that sort of thing. Meanwhile the Merchants... well, they Merch.
Mechanical
Initiate Action: Buzz
- Location
- Somewhere Strange
He's a Merchant now. Gang leader.
- Pronouns
- They/Them
Bizarrely, not being controversial seems to have driven down the number of people reading it. And commenting for that matter.
Vindictus
XENO
- Location
- Texas
Greg: Get out, Skidmark. This is my house now.
Skidmark: Oh? And how are you going to make me leave?
Greg: With the power... *Draws deck* of children's card games. Are you ready to D-D-D-Duel?!
I actually found it more uncomfortable personally than the endbringer fight chapters due to Taylor drinking after her issues with her dad's alcoholism. Might be personal issues.
- Pronouns
- They/Them
It's not the healthiest coping mechanism. It's a sort of experiment of hers, and one that clearly didn't work. Or at least, didn't work well enough to be worth it, in her view.
In some ways it's an extension of the, "Take a sip of his beer to see what the big deal is."