Stormborn

by Agayek

Yamatai, the Isle of Storms, was the crucible through which Taylor Hebert was reborn. Upon its shores she fought men and monsters and triumphed over them all. Now she has come home, and struggles with the one question it left her. What does that make her?

1. Becalmed: Chapter 1

Stormborn
by: Agayek

Part 1: Becalmed

Chapter 1

"Vykhodite, ne trat'te svoye vremya!" the man bellowed, his tone harsh and demanding. I didn't recognize the language, let alone understand it, but the way he jerked his gun around, even when barely visible in the light of the fires, was unmistakable. My eyes were wide and terrified, filled with half-shed tears. The frantic pounding of my heart beat a thunderous rhythm in my ears, almost loudly enough to cover the distant gunshots and screams that filled the air. I couldn't breath. I could barely think. My entire body was stiff and numb. I didn't want to go out there. I didn't want to die.

The rotten wood inches from my cheek exploded with a sudden, deafening bang, sending out a spray of splinters. I jerked away from the wall with a high-pitched shriek of surprise and fear as a line of red-hot fire stitched itself along my jaw.

"Out suka!" the man bellowed again. He kicked the wall of the half-collapsed shack I'd chosen as my hiding place hard enough that the whole thing shook. A cloud of dirt and flakes of rotten wood rained down throughout the whole shack. I flinched back and ducked my head, unable to suppress the shiver as I felt it settling into my hair. "Now!"

"Okay!" I yelped, unable to keep the shrill panic out of my voice. I instinctively tried to raise my arms and winced as the coarse rope pinning my wrists together behind my back dug into them. The skin on my wrists felt raw already and I wouldn't be surprised if I was bleeding. I did my best to ignore it and started moving jerkily toward the shack's only entrance. "Okay. I'm coming out. J-just don't shoot."

The grin the man wore as I squirmed out of the shack's narrow entrance was an ugly, brutal thing, a fitting match to the look in his eyes. My mouth went dry at the sight. I had to force my body to keep moving, but even then I couldn't stop my hands from shaking. This man had killed Patrick without a second thought, and he hadn't hesitated to order his thugs to kill the rest of the Endurance's crew who'd been caught. I didn't want to think about what he wanted to do to me.

As soon as I was out of the shack, he grabbed my shoulder and shoved me back against the wall. "You should not have run suka," he said, his voice low and oily. He pressed in tight against me, trapping me against the wall with his body. "You just make it worse."

The hand on my shoulder slid down my arm then onto my shirt. I shuddered as his hand brushed over my chest and down to my hip. It slid under the hem of my shirt and started to slide back up even as his other hand started loosening his belt.

My blood went cold. Not that. Anything but that.

The gut-wrenching shock must have shown on my face, because his grin grew wider and more feral. He made a sound, a kind of low, sadistic noise that might almost have been a chuckle and made to say something. I didn't listen. I had to escape, now. I'd rather eat a bullet than let this happen.

Before I could talk myself out of it, I shoved off the wall and slammed my head into his face as hard as I could. His nose broke with an audible crunch. Warm blood splattered on my forehead and the would-be rapist staggered back. I did my best to ignore the multi-colored stars dancing in my eyes and pushed past him, giving him a shove with my shoulder as I went. He staggered back but somehow managed to grab my arm before I could get out of reach.

"Chertovski suka!" he roared, pulling hard on my arm. My feet went flying out from underneath me and he flung me at the wall of the shack. A scream tore its way out of my throat, choking off into a breathless whimper as I slammed face first back into the wall. The man grabbed my neck and squeezed painfully, his fingernails digging furrows in my flesh. His other hand was already pawing at the back of my pants. He leaned in, close enough that I could feel his breath on my ear. When he spoke, his voice was wet, nasally, and furious. "For that, I will make you hurt."

I started to struggle, barely managing to turn my face away from the decrepit wood, but he just pushed harder. The grip on my neck tightened and I started to choke. Out of the corner of my eye, I could make out the sadistic grin he wore, and the pants already halfway down his thighs as he moved in behind me. Desperately, without stopping to think, my foot shot up and then back down in the strongest kick I could manage. By luck more than skill, my heel slammed into the inside of his knee. The joint gave with a wet pop and he collapsed with a pained, furious scream.

I stumbled back and away from the wall, unbalanced by the abrupt lack of weight behind me, and tripped over the man's injured leg. The impact with the ground drove the breath from my lungs and thought from my head. I lay there stunned for a seeming eternity, unable to do anything but struggle to breathe. Slowly, painfully, my body re-learned the process and the fire in my blood dimmed to merely excruciating, and I remembered the situation. I jumped up and whirled around, trying to find the latest attack.

By the time I turned around, he'd already pulled his gun and was lining up a shot. There was no time to think or plan, only to react. My body moved almost on its own, flinging me into a tackle that planted my full weight right into his stomach, even as I kicked at his injured leg again. He let out a strangled wheeze and the gun tumbled out of his grip, bouncing across the hard packed dirt. Before he could recover, I threw myself after it, my arms pulling against my bonds as hard as I could. I ignored the way the ropes cut into my skin and the sure to be spectacular bruises forming all around them. All that mattered was getting a hand free and getting it on that gun.

I was half a step away from the gun when it finally happened. My left wrist erupted in burning pain but I'd managed to drag it through the tight, coarse rope. Warm, sticky blood flowed freely down my hand, but I ignored it. I already knew what I had to do.

With a shout of triumph, I practically fell onto the gun, rolling over with it in hand just in time for the man to catch up with me. He lunged at me, nearly picking himself off the ground, and time seemed to slow to a crawl. The man hung almost suspended in the air, frozen rage etched into his every feature. For the first time, I could make out the muddy stains in his oversized coat, the gaunt thinness of his face behind the messy beard, and the missing tooth. The gun in my hands swung smoothly around, so slow and so precise I could scarcely believe I was the one doing it. It felt more like I was watching it on TV. Slowly, over the course of eons, the gun made its way all the way around to point at the man.

There was a long eternity of silence.

A deafening boom cracked in the still air and the spell was broken. The gun jerked hard in my hands, tweaking my fingers painfully and nearly twisting out of my grip. A geyser of red erupted out of the new, gaping hole in the man's head, splattering me with a burst of warm, chunky liquid. His ensured he continued toward me, arms flopping bonelessly as he went. I twisted into a roll, just barely managing to slip out from under him before he landed with a wet thud. The man, laying twisted and awkwardly on one side, twitched and gurgled randomly as the life slowly bled from his eyes. I watched, frozen, as blood flowed freely from the crater that had once been the man's forehead. As fear and anger and hate all fell away into a disturbing blankness. As the man became a thing.

"Oh God," I whispered. My voice was coarse and thick, slurred by sheer weight of emotion. My throat was tight and it hurt to get the words out. My mind was whirling at a million miles an hour and going nowhere. Relief and triumph and horror and shock and a million other things I couldn't hope to name clashed freely in my head. I didn't know what to think, or even to feel. Nothing made sense anymore. I was lost, left in a dazed sort of detachment, like I was a passenger in my own head. It was like my brain had been wrapped in gauze. And worst of all, I couldn't stop staring at the man as he gurgled and twitched his last.

It took everything I had to force myself to turn away, and suddenly, I was back at my desk, the long, jagged line of ink across my notes the only sign that anything out of the ordinary had happened. Air burned in my throat as I sucked in a shallow gasp. The network of shallow scars all along my left wrist throbbed painfully. My hands trembled from the adrenaline still thrumming in my blood. The white-knuckled grip on my pen was so tight it hurt. What felt like an entire platoon of miniature Stormguard pounded away at the inside of my ribs. The familiar fight-or-flight response sent electric tingles crawling up and down my spine.

At the front of the room, the teacher, a young, clean-shaven man in slacks and a button up, continued to lecture without missing a beat. Harsh, fluorescent light gently clashed with the warm, diffuse sunlight streaming through the windows. A low undercurrent of not-quite-sound filled the room as students scribbled down notes or mostly-silently talked to their friends. I closed my eyes, took a deep breath, and, with effort, forced my heart to slow down. Slowly, painfully, my muscles started to relax, eventually letting the pen slip through my fingers to land on the open notebook with a gentle thump. I blew out the breath I'd been holding, pushing as much of my tension as I could out with it. When I opened my eyes again, my hands had stopped shaking and I felt almost calm, or at least I'd stopped feeling like I'd kill someone for a sudden movement.

With a barely suppressed sigh at that cheery thought, I picked my pen back up and tried to start paying attention to the lecture again.

"-t Putin was instrumental in the chaos following Behemoth's attack on Moscow," the teacher was saying, gesturing at the giant map of the world he'd hung up on one wall. "In fact, it's widely believed his influence is what kept what's left of Russia from dissolving entirely. I won't bore you with all the details. Let's just say it probably has something to do with his time in the KGB. After things started to settle down-"

I let his droning wash over me, almost absently jotting down notes as he continued to lecture on the current state of Eastern Europe. The action was boring and repetitive, and apparently soporific to most of my peers, but that just made it easier to let habit take over. It was almost relaxing in a way.

Sadly, it couldn't last, and the teacher dismissed the class what felt like only a few minutes later. The room erupted into noise as students all packed up and headed out the door, even while tonight's homework assignment was being shouted over the din. I waited for the room to empty before I slipped out of my seat at the back of the room, sweeping my stuff off my desk and into my bag as I did, and ambled out of the room. It was lunchtime now, or it would be in a couple minutes. I wondered briefly if I'd be able to find a seat in the cafeteria today, but dismissed the question with a shrug. I'd just have to find out.

A minute or so later, I discovered that I did get a seat. I was early enough that no one had taken any of the three tables in the room that would let me keep an eye on both doors and put my back to a wall, which meant I got to eat my lunch at an actual table today. I shook my head as I plopped the paper bag holding my lunch onto it. That still felt a little weird, even six months after getting home. I pulled my sandwich out of the bag and contented myself with looking on the bright side. At least I wasn't still cringing at the thought of eating something I hadn't killed myself.

Even if I did have to prepare it.

The point I reminded myself with a silent growl, is that I am making progress. That was the important thing. That and eating, my stomach chose to remind me insistently. I sighed but obliged it quickly, tearing into my sandwich with the ferocity of a starving man rather than a hyena.

See? Progress.

The sandwich did me good, even if it didn't last very long, and by the time I'd worked through both it and the fruit I'd brought, I was feeling pretty satisfied.

"Christ Hebert," an unfortunately familiar voice said from further down the table. I sighed internally and glanced over, more to let them know they had my attention than any particular need. I'd been watching the whole room the entire time. I'd seen Emma come in, I'd known the moment she decided to lead her groupies to my table, and I'd been ignoring their insults-disguised-as-a-separate-conversation for the last few minutes. "I didn't know you could be any more disgusting."

Emma Barnes was the stereotypical queen bee of high school. Attractive, popular, outgoing, the next best thing to a literal angel in the eyes of anyone in a position of authority, and a colossal bitch to everyone she didn't like. Which, as far as I could tell, was mostly me.

At one point, her taunts and jeers had really bothered me. She and her new friends had made it their mission to torment me as much as they could, all throughout freshman year. Snide comments, spitballs in my hair, stolen bags or books, you name it, they did it. It was rarely physical, the worst I ever had to deal with in that regard was the occasional shove, but in some ways, the verbal abuse was worse. At least the physical abuse left a mark. I'd have been able to do something in that case. As long as Emma and company kept to words though, the teachers had been content to ignore it entirely. Every time I'd tried to get their help, it had been Emma and her friends' word against mine, and mine always turned out to be not enough.

I'm not ashamed to admit it had gotten to me, over time. Enough so that even my dad had picked up on it.

Then he'd introduced me to Mr. Roth, and everything had changed.

"Eh," I replied with a shrug, not at all bothered by her latest salvo. It took a lot more than petty teenage mean-girl bullshit to get to me these days. I did have my pride though. "There's a lot you don't know. Don't worry about it."

Emma said something back, but I'd stopped listening. I turned away, dismissing her from my thoughts entirely, and started rummaging through my backpack. My hand ghosted over my World Studies notes, my Math book, and Mr. Roth's pistol before I finally found what I was looking for. I pulled the small paperback out, cracked it open, and got to reading. Emma kept trying to goad me, I had to give her credit for persistence if nothing else, but I barely noticed it. I had better things to do with my time than indulge her idiocy, especially when I knew that none of them were dumb enough to want to try to get physical again.

Thankfully, it seemed my continued honest disregard had drained the interest out of the rest of them. The conversation at the table slowly turned toward other topics, ranging from things like which of the boys they wanted to have bend them over a table to who had spent the most money on the most useless piece of clothing and various other things I understood even less. Even Emma gave up on me and got pulled into it after a few minutes, when one of her friends, the black one, whatever her name was, started talking to her directly.

I wasn't sure how to feel about that. It was nice that Emma had stopped yapping at me about petty bullshit I really couldn't care less about, but at the same time, sheer proximity meant I was forced to learn far more about Emma's love life than I'd cared to in well over a year. Hell, I was probably learning more about it than I'd have wanted to even if we were still best friends. I thought about just getting up and leaving, but I had a feeling that'd only rekindle Emma's interest in me, and I didn't feel like going through the whole routine again.

In the end, I just rolled my eyes and kept reading. At least they were easier to ignore when they weren't actively trying to annoy me.

When the bell sounded the end of lunch, I slipped the book back into my bag and headed toward my next class. Math, I thought it was. I didn't remember for sure. My feet fell into familiar, if not comfortable, habits and wound up leading me to a classroom. When I recognized the teacher, a kindly-looking man old enough to be my grandfather, and a handful of the students filing into the room with me, I assumed I'd ended up in the right place.

I took my usual seat at the back, sinking into it only a few moments before the second bell rang and class began. The teacher launched straight into the lecture and I slipped back into habit, slowly filling my notebook in time with his speech. One by one, equations I barely understood and couldn't muster the energy to think more about flowed out of my pencil, joined by the occasional doodle as my mind wandered.

I tried to pay attention, I really did, but it was hard. After everything I'd seen and done, all the lives I'd taken, friends I'd lost, and horrors I'd somehow lived through, learning algebra really just didn't seem all that important. Nothing in school did, if I was being honest. I came because my dad wanted me to and I couldn't think of anything else to do with my time, but I couldn't make myself care about it. I was just going through the motions, and I knew it.

The classroom, the other students, hell, even the teacher all just kinda slipped into the background as I went on autopilot. I still took notes and listened to the lecture with half an ear, but it all blended into a dull, unremarkable stretch of routine monotony in my memory. Class bled into class bled into class, until the whole rest of the school day blurred together into an indistinguishable mess. I left the school building and hopped on my bus still wrapped in the haze of monotonous apathy that had become my life.

I sighed under my breath. I really needed to talk to Sam.

-[]-

"Tayluh!" Sam's voice echoed out of my phone the instant she answered my call. She rushed ahead, speaking a mile a minute and, I couldn't help but notice with a smile, trying to talk around what was clearly a mouthful of something. "'s goo' ta hea' fruh ew. I 'as be'nin' ta-"

"Swallow, Sam," I said with a half-laugh at her antics. That was so... Sam. "Then talk."

There was a loud, intentionally I'm sure, gulp, and Sam came back on. "Right, sorry," she said, her tone doing a good job of conveying precisely how sorry she actually was. I snorted indelicately and she tittered briefly. When next she spoke, I could practically hear her pout. "Anyway, it's good to finally hear from you again. I was starting to think you didn't like me anymore."

Sam, or Samantha Nishimura if you like being yelled at, was somewhere between best friend and older sister. We met the day after I came aboard the Endurance, right after the trip started. To everyone else, I was just 'that kid Roth had brought along'. Not worth the time to think about, let alone talk to. Sam though? Sam wasn't like that. Despite the fact that I was just a kid and that she had most of a decade on me, she talked to me like an equal. There was never any condescension from her, she never blew me off or tried to foist me onto someone else. She helped me a lot in those early days, with everything from dealing with my first bout of homesickness to chatting about boys. She even let me help with filming the idiot's tacky reality show. I wasn't much more than a glorified tripod, but she made it fun, and that counted for a lot. It had meant a lot to me. Then, when it all went to hell, she saved my life, and when she needed it, I made sure to return the favor.

There isn't a person alive I can trust like Sam, and I like to think the feeling's mutual.

"It's been three days, Sam," I said in my best deadpan. I knew her too well to rise to the bait.

"My point stands," she shot back, finality in her tone. "Anyway, whatcha need?"

"Nothing," I said, careful to keep any sign of the rut I'd been in out of my voice. "I just wanted to talk. How're you enjoying the city that never sleeps?"

"Boring!" She drew the word out over several seconds. "I told Dad I'd handle this trip because it's New York, y'know? But all I do all day is attend meetings, and by the time the meetings are done, I'm too wiped out to properly celebrate. It sucks. And don't even get me started on the meetings themselves."

I made a noncommittal, vaguely inquiring sound and that was all the encouragement Sam needed. I was treated to a blistering twenty minute rant on the shortcomings of the, and I quote, 'idiotic, backwards-thinking, demented, malformed, and misogynistic baboons' that she had spent the last two days in near-constant contact with.

By the time she was done, I was nearly howling with laughter.

"And then, and then the herpes wart has to gall to suggest that Dad had only sent me so the meetings would have a 'happy ending'!" Sam nearly growled into the phone. Part of me was outraged at the implication, but I'd taught Sam enough on the trip back to the US that I was sure she could handle herself against a grabby businessman, and I was having way too much fun listen to her continuing to insult the man without yet repeating herself.

"He didn't!" I gasped theatrically.

"Yes, the fink-faced pile of toejam did."

"What'd you do?"

"I borrowed a page from your book," she said matter of factly, and I suddenly felt a bit of worry break through my amusement. There was a very real chance she was about to ask me how to hide a body.

"Sam... what did you do?"

"Oh relax would you?" Sam's voice was airy and unconcerned. "You remember that reporter that jumped us a few months back?"

"Yeah," I confirmed. I remembered that reporter alright. Shortly after we'd gotten back, when us and Yamatai and everything was still big news, Sam had been visiting and we had been heading home from lunch when someone had practically jumped out from behind a bush and shoved a microphone in my face. I had barely managed to stop myself before I drove my new knife through his chin, not that he noticed. He was too busy demanding answers. Once I'd mastered my initial reaction and was sure I wasn't about to kill him, I'd proceeded to level my best glare at him.

It hadn't taken more than a few seconds for him to run off shouting apologies.

"It went kinda like that."

"Really?" I asked, raising an eyebrow in spite of myself. Maybe my perspective was skewed, but while I love her dearly, intimidating was not something I'd ever associate with Sam.

"Yes," Sam answered firmly at first, but soon trailed off into a more uncertain tone. "Well, it probably helped when Hirohito threatened to cancel the deal entirely if he kept being such a, a... kumquat!"

I chuckled, but I couldn't resist responding to that one. "I don't think 'kumquat' is an insult, Sam."

"Then it should be," she said petulantly. I heard some rustling that sounded like she was shaking her head. "Anyway, enough about me. What's up in the Bay?"

"Same old story," I said, unable to keep all of the bitterness out of my voice. "School, homework, the usual. Nothing special."

There was a long pause before Sam responded, and when she did, her voice was serious, completely absent its usual playful teasing. "Taylor, I know you don't want to hear this, but I really think you should think about meeting with Dr. Stein again."

"You're right, I don't want to hear it," I snapped back, more angrily than I'd intended. I shook my head and pushed the flash of irritation down. "Sorry. It's just, I've already tried the whole therapy thing, and it only made things worse. I really don't want to deal with that again."

"I know sweetie," Sam said. "But I'm worried about you." She paused briefly before continuing. "You don't have to go, but at least think about it, alright? For me?"

"I'm fine, Sam," I insisted. "There's nothing wrong. But since it bothers you so much, I'll let you know that I'm still keeping up with the one thing he recommended that actually made sense."

"Oh? You're heading back out to the woods?" Sam asked, latching onto the new topic immediately. She sounded relieved for the switch.

"Yeah. I'm heading out tomorrow and should be back Monday morning. I'll see if I can find a campsite with a cell signal and give you a call when I get set up, but I wouldn't hold my breath if I were you."

"Sounds great, but does Danny know of these plans?"

"Yeah," I said, drawing the word out and adding a questioning lilt to the end. "What's that got to do with anything?"

"Is he coming with you?"

"Nope. It's gonna be just me."

"Why not?"

"Because he doesn't want to?" I asked more than said. It was a true statement though. The last time he'd come with me, he'd barely been able to pull his own weight, and he'd seemed to genuinely hate it. I hadn't seen any reason to drag him out with me since. I'd told Sam all of this before of course, which just made her current line of questions all the more confusing.

"Have you asked him?"

"No, bu-"

"Go ask him." She cut me off sharply, her tone firm. "I'll give you the therapist, even if I do think you need it, but I'm drawing a line here. Bring him along when you leave tomorrow."

"Wha? But he doesn't even like camping!" I said. "Not to mention he's terrible at it. Why would I bother him with it?"

"Look, Taylor, you need to spend more time with your dad, and your dad needs to spend more time with you. I'm sure he'd be eager for the chance." My mouth opened and I started to say something, to object or deny or agree, I wasn't sure, but Sam barrelled ahead before I could. "At least ask him, alright? If he says no, then forget I said anything, but at least give him the choice. That's all I ask."

I was silent for several seconds, trying to decide if bothering Dad was worth shutting Sam up, before I sighed heavily.

"Alright, you win," I said, pointedly ignoring the muffled 'yes!' I could hear over the phone. "I'll ask him. But when he says no, I'm not going to force him to come with me."

"Awesome. Have fun with Danny tomorrow."

I sighed. It wasn't worth fighting over. "Yeah sure. Talk to you later, Sam."

"Bye Taylor, call me when you get back into town."

"I will," I promised and hung up.