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[Worm x Fate] Journeywoman & Apprentice

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God i want to slape taylor repeatidly in the face with the entire encyclopedia universalis... damnit girl learn to chill and stop making emma win with your attitude.
 
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fallacies said:
Zenjou looked to me, uncomprehending.

"Why are you so upset?" she asked. "This wasn't any personal failing on your part. It's nothing you should fret about."

I didn't reply. Pulling my shoes on over my bare feet, I walked out of the dance classroom — down the corridor to the stairs without a backwards glance.

"Taylor?" she called, stepping out into the hallway behind me. "Taylor!"
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I have the feeling that Rin is going to be dragged into helping Taylor heroing like when Shirou dragged her into helping him with the Grail war?. She has obviously didn't realise that her detached attitude has alienated Taylor. I'm actually a bit surprised that she hasn't made any comments on their shared attitudes to wanting to use their abilities to save others.

Speaking of I wonder where Shirou is? Still in a fractured feudal regressed Japan maybe?
 
Talking about Shirou I wonder if the Grail Wars ever came to fruition in this Timeline(s) where Parahumans emerged and if there could be any triggers caused by the Fire of the 4th?
 
fallacies said:
Similarly clad, but with the lower body to pull off the look, Zenjou managed to effect a running gait practically designed to maximize her draw of the male gaze from the pedestrian traffic — swaying her well-proportioned hips and thighs at just enough regularity that the jiggle wasn't unseemly.
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*Annette Herbert proceeds to roll on her grave harder*
 
fallacies said:
Hm? But that couldn't be true. My motes of mana didn't disperse unless I let them.

Most likely, I'd misunderstood something or other; and so I mentally filed it away for later.
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Poor Rin. Two for two.

At this rate, her next apprentice will have to agree to a geass about immediately reporting discrepancies between Rin's lessons and their perceived reality. Or a preemptive sealing designation. Probably both.

Maybe something in the geass about not running off and playing hero willy-nilly while she's at it.
 
Wolfund said:
God i want to slape taylor repeatidly in the face with the entire encyclopedia universalis... damnit girl learn to chill and stop making emma win with your attitude.
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And the irony is that Tattletale acted more like Emma than Rin did but somehow Taylor stick with her more, is it because Tattletale is closer to Taylor in age?. Either way here a difference between Tattletale and Rin, Rin wouldn't manipulate Taylor into anything at most, it's not in Rin's nature especially in how Canon in which she sucks at it, oh she's good hiding her magic but that it, Rin tends to care too much which it a weakness that false priest said, Rin may be willing to hide her secrets but she's always honest with her attitude. Tattletale is willing to play the nice card, pretend until Taylor imprints on her like a lost duck starve of companionship, yes she does eventually start to truly care Taylor but in the end the relationship was built on lies and wanting to get more allies against Coil even if it meant dragging a lonely girl that wanted to be a hero into the life of a villain and commit many moral comprises.

I like this fic, it basically Canon compliant to Taylor actual personality, on she isn't completely as much as a nice person even before she became skitter and yeah it can blame on her bullies but see this it also on her head because she tends to judge other more harshly and like to justify she isn't as bad as them, that's hypocrisy at it finest, and a lack of self reflection.
 
If Wildbow didn't want people to suspect Taylor of bisexuality, he shouldn't have put in passages of her focusing on the body of female acquaintances and enemies sometimes while thinking 'that ho, sexy sexy body' or internalized homophobia words to that effect.

At least this is better than her other obnoxious internal habit of breast size jealousy to indicate female teenager. A common sin in literature tbh.

Imagine if a young adult male protagonist internal thoughts were obsessed about his tiny penis and fear of being sexually inadequate. Oh it could be funny, but also no one would take the protagonist seriously until the end of time.

Very preferable to think of 'Taylor is in binial' than 'Taylor is 'just' jealous if you make that - maybe a bit unfair - comparison.
 
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SCO said:
Imagine if a young adult male protagonist internal thoughts were obsessed about his tiny penis and fear of being sexually inadequate. Oh it could be funny, but also no one would take the protagonist seriously until the end of time.
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Teenage girls are judged for their appearance way more than teenage boys are, for a variety of reasons (well, just one if you count 'the patriarchy' as all one thing), so this isn't entirely a fair comparison. Internalised misogyny is totally a thing.
 
Yeah i get that, but that habit in many, many worm fics is so ingrained to 'characterize early taylor' that i'm always reaching for the big (small) guns to show how jarring it can be.

I'm ... pretty sure .... that's one piece of characterization that is best left on the wayside alongside other ideas from the original. Sure it can be used to show that Emma destroyed her self-esteem; but it's pretty obnoxious every time and doesn't go anywhere most times (maybe even all the times i remember - the only times it gets mentioned again is 99% of the time 'get bigger boobs with power').
 
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011 : Bear These Not When Acting of Benevolence
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    • Friday, February 4th, 2011​


    Nine hundred dollars a year. That was the cost of a typical cable package in Rockingham County, New Hampshire.

    Money wasn't so tight that we couldn't afford it, apparently; but seeing as our downstairs television hardly saw any use these days, I found it mystifying that Dad would insist on paying out the subscription fee month after month. It was, after all, a rare occasion he was even in the mood to vegetate in front of the TV after dinner.

    Personally, I'd all but fallen out of the habit — up until hospitalization had forced it again upon me.

    Back when I was in middle school, when we bothered still to sit through educational programming as a kind of family activity, television was like a window into the unfamiliar; to things and places far removed.

    Really, it wasn't. It couldn't be.

    Somebody at the other end was filming at profit — presenting to the audience a glimpse of the world as filtered through a particular point of view; and further whittled down by budget constraints, the interests of sponsors, and miscellaneous practical considerations. If there was anything a product so fundamentally adulterated could be removed from, it was a semblance of reality.

    What it was was a distraction from myself; a reprieve from being Taylor Hebert — however fleeting.

    In that capacity, it could maybe qualify as an anesthetic or a placebo — a substitute to actually living; to facing things head-on and in earnest.

    Mostly because it felt a bit too close to running away from my problems, I avoided couch-potatoing in general; but sparingly sampled, a poison could be therapeutic. At the very least, it passed the time that couldn't be better spent on other things.

    Tonight, I'd had my fill.

    Seated on the floor with my back against the couch; tightly hugging a pillow, I announced: "I'm planning on sleeping in tomorrow morning. Please don't wake me up."

    My eyes were fixed on the screen so as not to give anything away; but on the wall behind the couch, a fly watched as Dad turned to regard me. In the poor lighting, its compound eyes couldn't discern his face against the glare of the television.

    "You're not sick again, are you?" he asked.

    "Kinda under the weather," I said. "I'm still getting used to my exercise routine."

    Dad sighed.

    "I'm not going to tell you to quit," he said, "but remember that the doctors told you to take it easy."

    I didn't reply. Standing, I dropped my pillow upon the couch and stretched — reaching my arms toward the ceiling as I worked out the kinks along my spine.

    "Gonna turn in early," I said, watching as a mother panda played with her cub. "G'night, Dad."

    "G'night," he replied.

    Quietly shifting across the room as I exited to the foyer, my insects caught the naked concern in his expression; the powerlessness and the self-reproach. It made me feel a little guilty for giving him the cold shoulder now that he was putting in the effort to be there; but his company wasn't what I needed at the moment.

    What I needed was for him to skip out on checking up on me when he left for work in the morning.

    To that end, lying to him was almost an afterthought.

    Ascending the stairs, I entered my room; locked the door behind me. Zenjou's lights were on across the street; and so, rather than turning on my own and risking her attention, I relied on the winter moths that covered the ceiling to supplement my poor nocturnal vision — examining in the moonlight the handiwork of the black widows upon the floor.

    Two weeks into my hospitalization, a segment on the Discovery Channel had gone into the use of synthetic spider silk in body armor — in particular, the creation of a protective under-suit thin enough to be worn under clothing; tough enough to withstand a bear attack. Taking it as inspiration, I'd borrowed a laptop from Dad and conducted a bit of an investigation into the breeds of spiders endemic to New England; the properties of their silk.

    Winter wasn't a good time for spider hunting; but owing to the relative warmth of the Bay, I managed to luck into several breeding pairs of black widows in the vicinity of the hospital. Right away, I set them to the task of out-of-season reproduction; and then, when the females had each given birth to at least four egg sacs, to the beginnings of a costume.

    The eggs of a black widow had an incubation period of about three weeks. Hopefully, in another couple of days, I'd have a workforce of two to four hundred hatchlings from every sac I'd smuggled home undamaged.

    Making do with the adults for the moment, I'd so far woven together a loop of fabric half the size of my ribcage — a dirty yellow-gray, single-layered, and frayed about the edges. Though it was nothing impressive to look at, I couldn't help but take a bit of pride in the regularity of the weaving — nearly indistinguishable from factory-manufactured spandex.

    However, my current collection of black widows could only work so fast — even that Reinforcement persisted unless I explicitly withdrew my mana; and autopilot allowed that irrelevant of my state of consciousness, they could execute predetermined orders.

    Just like access to sensory information, execution of orders required that a given arthropod remain within the range of my power. If I were in other words away for whatever reason, the spiders would quickly default to their natural behavior — regardless that they were Reinforced.

    To protect them from territorial cannibalism and other environmental hazards, then, it was necessary to physically isolate them every time I departed the neighborhood; to spread them out to pockets of safety abundant in food.

    Carelessness had already cost me one of the four females I'd started out with. The impact upon my rate of progress was noticeable.

    'This is gonna take ages,' I thought, lifting the cloth before me.

    Still, with Reinforced insects at my disposal, a costume wasn't immediately necessary; and potentially exposing myself to danger could wait until I figured out the powerset I wanted to present.

    Combat wasn't the sole avenue to a heroic debut.

    'Jogging gear it is,' I decided.


    After several tries, I managed to grasp ahold of the bottom-most rung of the drop-down ladder, maybe fourteen feet above the floor of the alley — two feet higher than the world record for a slam dunk performed without the use of a parahuman power. With an upper body strength I wouldn't have been able to muster a week ago, I pulled myself to the second floor platform of the fire escape and started up the stairs.

    Full-body Reinforcement boosted physical capabilities in general, but the rate and volume of mana circulation to which I naturally gravitated didn't permit for starkly inhuman performance outside of a minor Mover rating. As it was a bit of a bother to force myself to consistently exceed my 'comfort zone,' I'd instead adopted the solution of momentarily escalating mana flow whenever exertion beyond the norm was required — targeting the joints and muscle groups specifically engaged on an intentional basis.

    I wasn't certain how far I could go with this, but maybe with a little trial and error, I'd be able to parkour from building to building absent the risk of grievous injury.

    People didn't often look upwards, but the fire escape I'd climbed was positioned relative to the surrounding architecture in such a way that a pedestrian would easily catch sight of me if I lingered. Thus, the 'perch' I'd selected was on the roof, six stories up — atop a weathered concrete protrusion level to my shoulders.

    Hopping up on top, I seated myself cross-legged — pulling open the wrapper of an energy bar I'd brought along.

    This particular building exceeded the height of its neighbors by a couple of stories, and provided a view of the shopping arcade at Little Tokyo and the Lord Street Market — the rectangle of asphalt on the side of the Newmarket Green. Fugly Bob's was on the side of the Green closer to me, along the shoreline and hidden behind a building.

    To the purpose of securing a nice, sanitary hideaway at which to briefly rest, it served my needs that the concrete surfaces about the rooftop were free of litter and discarded needles — owing presumably to the Bounded Field that fed upon the leyline junction beneath the foundations.

    It hadn't been any intention on my part to seek out another of the properties managed by the Whateleys; but now that I was aware of the way that leylines felt, it was difficult not to instinctively keep track of their bearing via the senses of my swarm. That said, my use of this building was entirely unrelated to mana access, and I didn't in the first place have a need for such a thing.

    Simply, sitting where I was — roughly at the center of this neighborhood — my power had a rough coverage of the fields of movement for the targets of my observation; bringing the apparent base of their activities — a building at the edge of the shopping arcade — just within the perimeter of my newly-extended range.

    The investigation of said building was my objective for tonight.

    Currently, it was a quarter to five. Because I'd awoken later than intended, the majority of the working girls I'd planned on tracking down had already gone home. Thankfully, a couple of them were still 'on the clock'; and outside of long stretches of quiet inactivity, they were servicing their clients in cars; in the public toilets at the self-service gas station south along Lord Street; and in one instance, behind a dumpster. I did my best not to observe them in the act.

    The ones that departed their posts at the street-side did so on foot, usually after concluding business with a decently-paying customer. Probably, they had a nightly quota to fill? With my swarm, I'd tailed them from several blocks away, and quickly discovered their common destination.

    The place was a fairly nondescript brownstone commercial building, four floors in height; with what felt to be inhabited living quarters in the upper stories. Most of the first floor was occupied by a 24-hour Chinese takeout place; and initially, I guessed that the stern-looking man chopping meat in the kitchen might've been the girls' pimp.

    This turned out not to be the case.

    On the bench out front, idly browsing a smartphone, there was a muscular, heavily-tattooed Asian woman with a cigarette between her lips, clad in ripped skinny jeans and an overly narrow tube top. She was maybe in her 20's or early 30's; maybe a working girl herself, I thought; but prior to heading into the building and presumably turning in for the night, each of the girls I'd followed were sure to approach her — handing to her the hundreds of dollars they'd made.

    A female pimp. I should've been less surprised. My time at Winslow was after all evidence enough that solidarity in gender was a fiction. Still, it was hard to buy that somebody who had to be cognizant of what it meant to be sexually exploited would herself victimize women — pushing these girls to objectify their own bodies for the pleasure of men.

    Was she a victim as well? Or were there factors at play that I was flat-out missing the context for?

    Superficially, it didn't seem as if the girls were being forced to cough up the money under duress; and it was entirely plausible the tattooed woman was providing them with food and shelter at cost. With the gangs under the ABB being the dominant power in this area, maybe she wasn't permitted to render assistance in any other manner. It wasn't good to jump to conclusions simply on account that I'd been freshly reacquainted with the unthinking callousness girls could inflict on one another.

    It was another reason to properly conduct an investigation; to infiltrate the building with Reinforced insects, and to determine if a police intervention was necessary. My preconceptions and biases couldn't be let to get in the way of the things that needed to be done.

    'Let's have a quick look at what we're dealing with,' I thought, munching down on my energy bar.

    Five blocks away, the Reinforced moths I flitted into the building gave me a glimpse of the squalor of the living conditions within.

    Aside from the flaking paint; the dust-covered surfaces; the scarred wooden flooring, partition walls on the second to fourth stories had subdivided the available space into a maze of bedrooms that probably violated some sort of building ordinance. Laid out like military barracks from World War II, the rooms were crammed with triple bunk beds at an approximate density of three to every 8-by-10-foot space — exceeding maximum residential occupancy by nine times, if I correctly recalled Dad's comments on the dormitory the DWA had set up for unemployed association members.

    There didn't look to be a commons area in the upper floors, but the half of the basement that hadn't been claimed by the Chinese restaurant for storage had been outfitted with a simple kitchen and dining area — not quite spacious enough to seat all of the girls.

    At present, a couple of them were there, supping on leftovers and instant noodles. The conversation between them wasn't in English; and not having seriously studied East Asian languages, I couldn't glean much from it beyond they might've been speaking in Chinese or Japanese.

    There weren't any clear signs that they were being victimized or forced by violent means. Despite the frankly awful environment they had to put up with, these were normal girls, leading normal lives — joking with each other and chatting away as they ate their meals, irrelevant of their occupation; of their oversexualized attire.

    Though there were probably illegal going-ons somewhere in the background — whatever the context that gave rise to the circumstances these girls faced — thinking on it a little more, I didn't know that calling the police would actually be of benefit to anyone.

    I hadn't the background to correctly identify narcotics via the senses of my swarm; but if I were to hypothetically find a dangerous substance somewhere in the building, reporting it to the proper authorities would at the very least significantly disrupt the lives of the working girls housed on the premises. Worst case scenario, a couple of them might be jailed for possession. First-time offenders could be put away for something on the order of seven years; and second-time offenders could be sentenced to up to fifteen years.

    Even if it were just that I called it into the Brockton Bay Housing Authority that there were residential code violations at so-and-so address, the girls here would end up being forced out into the streets.

    Maybe I should've thought this through before coming out here.

    'Why did I think it would be easy?'

    I was too eager; too quick to oversimplify. Though I knew that substantially improving the girls' situation was beyond my power, I'd approached tonight's investigation with an unconscious certainty that I'd easily discover a wrongdoing I could fix.

    Just how arrogant was I, really? Acting like a hammer in search of a nail wouldn't help anyone. It wasn't to my benefit that the world existed, and there would always be problems I wouldn't be able to solve.

    My duty was to the —

    "—————!"

    A scream outside the range of my hearing. I turned my head.

    At a side-street intersection three blocks away, one of the working girls I'd been tracking was pressed against a wall by a client she'd just now finished servicing. Holding a gun to her throat, he ordered her to hand over her evening's take.

    "Shit," I said.

    I'd been 'aware' of what was happening to her, sort of; but it was a limitation of my power that even within close range of my body, I was hardly omniscient.

    It wasn't difficult to multitask to an extreme degree — consciously attending to a vast number of items simultaneously; but 'vast' was ultimately 'finite,' and peeping on people taking care of their business hadn't been a priority tonight. As such, up until the girl's scream had drawn my focus, the unfolding of her situation had been relegated to the back of my mind.

    I wasn't yet prepared to expose myself to danger. If I intervened, there was a chance that I could be injured or worse — and then I wouldn't be of much aid to anyone, would I? The proper solution was to leave it to the police; to seek out the nearest public phone, and dial it in to 911.

    There was a phone on Lord Street, maybe 500 meters away. How long would it take for me to get there and make the call? Thereafter, how long would it take for the police to arrive? The nearest precinct was at the edge of the Boat Graveyard, a good distance away; and I'd heard that the average response time to a 911 dispatch in Brockton Bay was roughly ten minutes. Being as I was in the middle of ABB territory, the wait would be longer ...

    No.

    The pistol could be fired at any point, and by then it would be too late. If it fell within my power to protect the girl, and for purposes of self-preservation, I left her to the mercy of the thug, I would be complicit in whatever harm she came to. As it was, I was already wasting time.

    Here and now, if I wasn't ready to put my life on the line, I'd never be, and there would always be more excuses. There was a clear evil at hand, and an equally clear solution.

    In that case, there wasn't a need for doubt or hesitation.

    Considerations for the future were the only permissible compromise.

    No insects. No obvious use of power. Behind the thug, the T-intersection had a point of entry without the woman's field of vision. All it would take to reach it was a risky bit of parkour I'd never attempted, and a sheer drop of four stories.

    "This is an objectively terrible idea," I said aloud, leaving behind my plastic bag and taking off.

    The one-and-a-half-story fall to the rooftop adjacent wasn't a lot more imposing than the distance from my bedroom window to the driveway in front of my house. Touching down from the jump and using the level platform of the two buildings northward for a running start, I escalated mana circulation to make the diagonal leap across an alley intersection.

    I cleared the distance, but lost my footing at landing — scraping my left knee as momentum carried me forward to a tumbling halt. Hissing, I pushed myself to my feet, forcibly resuming course so as not to waste time. The fire alley next up was slightly narrower; slightly easier to clear; and pointedly ignoring the pain in my leg, I jumped again — arriving after another stretch of roof at the precipice overlooking the crime-in-progress.

    'Here goes,' I thought, stepping off the ledge.

    Ensuring my own safety wasn't strictly a matter of Reinforcement. Precisely as I struck the ground, I allowed my legs to bend beneath the weight of my body; exerting just enough muscular resistance to softly mitigate the force of the fall. Consequently, the impact was rather lighter than expected; and without so much as having to make a three-point landing, I was able to move again.

    Disengaging Reinforcement so as not to seriously injure the mugger, I jogged up behind him.

    "Hey!" I shouted, grabbing his shoulder.

    He glanced in my direction, and I threw a punch at his face — slamming my fist against the side of his jaw.

    It wasn't enough to knock him out; but disoriented, he inadvertently let go of his pistol — releasing his grip on the girl. She scrambled away, and I kicked the gun out of reach; restored my Reinforcement, in case he had another weapon on his person.

    "Police are on their way," I lied, "and I've got your face on camera. Wanna stick around and try your luck?"

    Swearing, he took off at a sprint. I breathed in relief, but noticed on turning that the girl had picked up the gun — unsteadily directing the barrel at my body.

    "Please," I said. "Put it down."

    She was Asian, a couple of years older than me; maybe Japanese. Bloodied nose and the bruises on her face aside, she wasn't unattractive, and might've looked less out of place if she traded her crop top, miniskirt, and fishnet for something more in line with Emma's tastes in clothing. It was hard to imagine how she'd ended up as a working girl.

    "No police," she said, breathing unevenly — crying; clearly terrified.

    Going by the pronunciation of her words, she was a first-gen immigrant, or from one of the more insular foreign communities. I didn't know why she didn't want to involve the police, though, considering her injuries.

    Certainly, prostitution was against the law in the state of New Hampshire — but that didn't feel like reason enough. Responding to accusations of over-policing and discrimination, the BBPD had after several high-profile incidents significantly reduced their presence in the Asian neighborhoods of the Docks; and specifically, their enforcement against sexual solicitation. These days, they tended to look the other way where working girls and compensated dating were concerned. If they even booked a woman for streetwalking, she'd likely be released without charge by the end of the night.

    Was the girl worried because she was an undocumented immigrant, then? Kinda doubtful, unless she was vastly misunderstanding something. Brockton Bay had famously been a sanctuary city since the 1st Asian diaspora, way back in the 80's. It was a long-standing policy that the BBPD wouldn't cooperate with federal authorities in the enforcement of deportation.

    Assuming she wasn't unaware of the city's policy on immigrants, she was probably either in possession of drugs, or a person of interest in some ongoing criminal investigation.

    It wasn't my intent to make her life more difficult, though; and so, for now, I'd deal with just the problem immediately at hand.

    "I get it," I said, raising my hands to placate her; to momentarily deescalate. "No police. Calm down, okay?"

    "Go," she replied, trembling. "Leave now!"

    I would — once I was certain that she wasn't a threat to herself and others. In her current state of mind, leaving a firearm in her possession wasn't an option.

    "You're bleeding," I said, slowly pacing toward her. "Let me call an ambulance — get you to a hospital, at least."

    "No hospital!" she shouted.

    I took another step; and then, thinking to disarm her, I made to dash forwards —

    The sound of the gunshot was deafening — not at all like in the movies. The very first sensation I had was tactile — of an impact that sent me tumbling to the ground; of something exiting through the back of my left leg. In the instant, there was only numbness — but it didn't persist.

    I expected pain, but what arrived did so in the company of a searing heat; like sharp pins cleansed in fire, slowly thrust against the muscles of my inner thigh. Judging by the amount of blood pooling beside me, the bullet must've struck an artery or something.

    A short distance away, something clattered to the ground. Lightheaded, I turned my gaze to the Asian girl, whose eyes had widened in horror.

    She said something that I couldn't make out; backing away before turning and running.

    I didn't spare the attention to track her. Almost as soon as she was out of sight, the moths overhead caught sight of a visual distortion at the opposite end of the alley — vaguely human-shaped, but not unlike a haze in the distance on a hot summer day. In moments, it resolved, and a familiar figure approached me from behind — the four-inch heels of her leather thigh-highs clicking against the asphalt.

    "You stupid, stupid girl," muttered Zenjou.
     
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    • This is what you get for running into a dangerous situation with zero training and little preparation, Taylor.
     
    Sweet new chapter, and also not shocking this would happen, but at least it wasn't Lung this time and hopefully a lesson can be learn here that canon Taylor never learn or even self reflected on.
     
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