Z.R. Stein

Ask Not the Sparrow How the Eagle Soars - A Worm/Kill la Kill Crossover AU

I do not own the characters of the respective properties in any way, shape, or form.

It's time for crossposting boys and girls! If you've been wondering why I haven't been writing on for the past...what's it been, two years now? Well, I have been writing, quite often, in fact, but on Spacebattles. And I figured hey, why not port them all over here so that people can read them as well?

I probably won't be actually writing any new chapters for any of these fics anytime soon, though.

Anyways, enjoy!

X X X

Prologue

It was a particularly sweltering August night when Taylor Hebert's life changed forever.

She was lying in her cabin, staring up at the rough timber ceiling and thinking about her current situation. Summer camp had offered up a welcome escape to relative normalcy in the aftermath of her first year at Winslow. No Emma or Sophia, no daily abuse and barbed insults; it was, in Taylor's mind, just short of paradise. Sure, Camp Campbell was run down and the counselors didn't seem to care, and the other campers were a mix of sullen teenagers-a few of whom were probably gang members-and the beds were lumpy and there were reputed to be leeches in the lake and...Taylor sighed and rolled over. Regardless of the imperfections of the camp, no one targeted her specifically, and she could just sink into obscurity like she wished she could every day at Winslow. Blissful anonymity. It said something about how shit her life was that she actually welcomed that.

Though, there was a small part of Taylor that felt anxiety at being back at Camp Campbell. The last summer she had attended, her life had been...well, not perfect, but certainly much better. Emma had still been her friend, she had still talked to Dad, even if they was more distance between them than there used to be before Mom's death. She had been just another student, just another girl excited and nervous to attend high school. And then, upon returning from summer camp, it was to find that her closest friend had abandoned her, another had taken her place, and that the two of them were set on making her life miserable.

Fucking Sophia. Fucking Emma. And she supposed, fucking Madison too.

Taylor turned over again, fluffing her pillow and trying to find a cool spot. Maybe it was just her pessimism talking, but she was scared. Scared that this time when she returned from camp, things would be even worse.

She groaned. There was a happy thought. Maybe the Camp was cursed. It honestly wouldn't surprise her.

Sitting up with a suppressed grumble, Taylor blinked blearily and groped around for her glasses; no way in hell that she was sleeping tonight. Her swirling thoughts and the uncomfortably warm and humid had seen to that.

Her feet kicked around the edge of her bed until she found her slippers, her toes burrowing in appreciatively. The young girl quietly crept out of the cabin door, trying not to wake her fellow cabin mates. She looked up at the night sky, thousands of stars winking down at her, set in inky blackness. One in particular was brighter than the others, shining boldly just to the left of the moon. The north star? She didn't know; astronomy had never really been her specialty.

Taylor yawned and stretched, several vertebrae in her back crackling pleasantly. Hopefully all the counselors were asleep as well, if they caught her out like this after hours she'd be in trouble. Though, considering how little any of them cared, it was unlikely that they'd stayed up that long. She didn't have a phone, so she didn't know exactly what time it was, but Taylor was willing to bet it was well past midnight. Now, all she needed to do was sneak into the activity center and snag some water from the cooler.

The moon provided enough light that Taylor easily picked her way along the gravel pathway, slippers crunching as she made her way. Now that she was outside the cabin, it was almost pleasant. Funny how that worked.

Taylor pushed her way into the activity center, strolled up to the water cooler, pushed down the tap, and yawned again. Maybe she just needed to move around? She thought she remembered reading somewhere online that that could help when you were having trouble sleeping.

Eh, not like it really mattered anyways. Taylor drank her water, crumpled up the paper cup and threw it away, and exited the building. She felt like she could go to sleep now, intrusive and persistent thoughts be damned. The lumpy bed that had seemed like a sweaty prison just a few minutes earlier was looking much more attractive.

Halfway back to her cabin, Taylor realized something...odd. Was it just her, or was it becoming easier to see? Taylor blinked several times; no, it wasn't her eyes being more dilated. The gravel was definitely being lit up now, a reddish shade being cast over everything.

She looked up and gaped. The star that she had seen earlier had grown in size; no longer was it a distant speck, but a roaring crimson comet that streaked across the sky (or was it a meteor?). The trail of fire was bright enough to light up the camp with a hellish glow, the lake near the camp buildings reflecting the light back erratically.

As she watched, stupefied at the display, Taylor noticed that there were pieces breaking off of the comet. Smaller pieces of red material that scattered outwards, falling down to Earth, into the forests, right towards her.

Taylor made a gurgling noise as she realized that one of the shed pieces was, in fact, on a trajectory straight towards her. She turned to run, slippers scrambling to find purchase on the gravel pathway. She made it twenty feet before she dared look back and her world exploded into pain as a loud ringing filled her ears. Everything was confusing. She didn't know where she was. She didn't-

"Need...food..."

-know what was happening, what was happening? There had been a meteor. A meteor that had hit her, broken her body, put her in-

"Please...need to eat..."

-all this pain. Just her luck, why was this happening, what was going on?

Taylor coughed, sucking in a lungful of air as she tried to marshal her thoughts. She was in more pain than she could ever remember being in before. Blinking rapidly to clear dust out of her eyes, she looked down at what remained of her lower body. She felt a rush of cold go through her when she saw that her left leg was just gone, bone protruding from the ragged stump that remained. Her other leg wasn't much better, being so burned and twisted that it looked more like a piece of half burned log than a human appendage. Her pelvis was broken as well, and she also seemed to be on fire. Taylor dully felt her lips twitch. Of course she was on fire. The universe wouldn't be satiated to just mangle her body beyond it's mortal limits.

"Give me...need...blood."

And now she was hearing voices. Hallucinations weren't uncommon when a person was dying, right? Taylor wasn't sure. It was becoming hard to think. Odd. Hadn't she just been complaining about how warm the night was? It was much too cold now.

"Need...need...you! You there!"

Taylor blinked slowly. Well...that was an odd hallucination to have.

Two meters away, trapped under a large mass of glowing and pulsating red...something (threads?)...was an honest to god piece of clothing. That was talking to her. It was itself colored black and red, two bloodshot yellow eyes staring at her. Clothes weren't supposed to have eyes. Taylor felt another minute smile on her face break out at the sheer absurdity of her situation.

"Human! Need blood! Come, touch me! I can help you!"

Taylor mulled the thought over in her head for a few seconds. Well...it wasn't like she had anything left to lose, right? She was dying anyways. Now...all she had to do was actually make it to the odd talking uniform.

She whimpered as she moved her body, dragging herself forwards along the ground. Her arms and hands were, luckily, mostly undamaged, and she was able to move close enough to the talking uniform that it was able to reach out one arm (sleeve?) and touch her hand.

And then, for the second time that night, Taylor's world exploded.

Her back arched in -agony, pleasure, grief, loss- as the uniform -Kamui- wrapped itself around her body, bolts of white hot lightning arcing out to strike several nearby trees. Inside of her mind, Taylor felt something crack.

[Query]

[Alarm]

[Anger]

[Aggression]

"She is mine! Not yours!"

Taylor screamed and a spike of white hot pain burrowed into her mind. And she knew no more.

. . .

If Dragon had eyes to narrow, she would narrow them right now. An unidentified extraterrestrial object had just passed over the Eastern seaboard, close enough to the surface that it had ignited in the atmosphere. Whatever it was, it didn't match the composition of any material in her databanks, and was giving off some extremely weird radiation. And while the object had subsequently left Earth's atmosphere on a trajectory towards the sun, it had shed several hundred pieces of itself across five states. Some of which were at least as large as semi trucks. She sent out messages to the Directors of the Boston, New York, Brockton Bay, and Philadelphia Protectorates to investigate. She needed more data.

Dragon dedicated a substantial allotment of her runtimes to examining the situation. At first glance, this had the makings of a byzantine Simurgh plot. After all, Ziz was the one who controlled the upper atmosphere. The first Tinker made space shuttles had met their demise at the hands of the 'youngest' Endbringer, after all. And yet...the next Endbringer attack was months away. If the Simurgh had orchestrated this, then the Endbringers were breaking the pattern that they had set for decades. And that was worrying. If they started attacking whenever they felt like it, human civilization on Earth Bet would be gone in a matter of years, maybe even months.

And that...that scared her.

X X X

Expect more chapters of this quite soon.