Riders of Worm
It seemed as though the entire world was staring fixedly at the 4 figures that sat stride horses suspended in midair. Everyone, and everything stared at those 4 riders, from Leviathan, its watery form fixed in a gigantic, motionless wave, poised to swamp the city of Brockton Bay, to capes, both heroes and villains who found their eyes drawn, against their will to the the riders in the sky.
The first rider clad in red mail, a black skull bandanna tied around raven hair obscuring her face, a sword with a skilled hilt clenched in one blood red gauntlet. The first riders horse was coal black, its man and hooves alight with licking flames.
The second rider was clad in full bodied white plate mail, with a white robe cinched at the neck and waist, a dingy, off white crown resting on top of the pristine, if menacing white helmet. And in the riders hand was a bow of pale yew wood, unstrung, but somehow humming with power.
The rider with the crown of diseased, corpse white metal sat astride a horse rife with disease, its skin riddled with open wounds and sores through which crawled worms and flies.
The third rider wore a simple pair of green vests and slacks, along with a white shirt that hung of her emaciated frame, almost drawing her in fabric with each bone in her body clearly defined under her taut skin. In one boney, white knuckled hand was clutched a set of obsidian scales that seemed to absorb all nearby light.
The third rider sat astride a horse that seemed to be on the edge of death, its stomach bulging, parchment thing skin stretched over bone and organ, every breath a torturous wheeze of effort that left the horse looking more emaciated and worn then before.
And then, finally, the fourth rider, a pale woman, clad in a suit pale white suit, long white hair drawn back into a long ponytail that reached down to the small of her back. Her eyes, were like to chips of obsidian that contrasted starkly with the white and grey suit the woman wore, in one gloved hand the woman held a bone white scythe that ended in a blade so thin and sharp, it seemed to disappear if you didn't see it look at it from the side.
The fourth riders horse was one of bone, and pale, corpse like skin that had large hole torn into it, exposing nothing but pale bone and infinite and withered innards.
The crimson rider held up her sword and spoke, her voice sounding across the silent battlefield like a howitzer, the whistle of falling bombs, and screams of the dying.
"Brockton Bay! I am WAR! And for to long this city has languished in the grip of corruption, filth, and the inhuman! Today is the day that it becomes purged in the cleansing fire!"
The second rider raised one clenched fist and spoke, its voice gurgling and thick with phlegm.
"Brockton Bay…. I am Plague, and for far too long the rich and the powerful have rotted within their golden places, for too long have the inhuman squandered their lives with indulgences and flaunted their perfection. I have come to drag down the inhuman with rot and corruption, and bring them down through force into equality."
The third rider lifted her scales so the were in front of her, her voice thin, worn, and dusty, as though she speaking hadn't been on her list of things to do for the last few hundred years.
"Brockton Bay… I am Famine… For too long have the rich, the powerful, and the inhuman… Glutted themselves on the fat of your labors… Leaving you all defenseless, starving, and dying, I am here to turn the tables, to flip over the game board of life and give all living an equal chance. No more greater, no more lesser."
The fourth rider merely inclined her head, and then an absolutely terrifying voice seemed to rise out over the battlefield, a voice of coffin lids slamming shut, a voice of cracking bone and dripping blood.
"Brockton Bay. I am Death the eternal. I am here to reclaim all who have escaped my grasp and eluded their final rest. I will take every single Inhuman that has been corrupted by their unnatural power, power that will be cleansed from them in life if they surrender, or the final rest if they fight."
And then Death raised her scythe high, so that it caught the mid-day light with a slight sparkle.
"Today Brockton Bay, the four horsemen ride, today, the world ends and is born anew from amidst the ashes, a new world will arise, a better one."
And with that, the four horsemen rode, and with them, the end followed.
Five months ago
Taylor screamed as the belt her mother was wielding lashed into her back yet again. She was half listening as her mother ranted of her daughters sin and weakness. How she failed her father through her weakness. But finally the stinging, burning lashes stopped, and Taylor curled in on herself as she listened to her mother slams her bedroom door shut as she left.
She listened as the usual after-beating ritual played itself out, Annette stomping down the stairs, loudly muttering about 'sins of the flesh', and 'weaknesses of the soul and the spirit'. Taylor listened with her ear to her carpeted floor as cabinets slammed, and glass clinked.
But then something happened that was not a part of the typical ritual.
There was a large thump, a tinkle of breaking glass and then silence.
Taylor waited for a few moments, listening to see if her mother would stand up. But as the silence continued, Taylor cautiously stood up and slipped her shirt over her cut, welt covered, and bleeding back.
She stood and opened her door, her bare feet treading softly down the stairs to the kitchen, ready at any time to run back to her room, but her mother, instead of drinking herself into a drooling oblivion as was the norm, was instead on the floor, moaning.
Destination
In a panic, Taylor rushed to her Mother's side, just in time to hear the words that would break her mind, soul, and spirit. The words that she had been dreading ever since her father had died in a car accident while coming to pick her up from a slumber party.
Trajectory
"This… this is all your fault, your father, and now this… All your fault.
Taylor broke as her Annette Hebert, mother to Taylor Hebert, widow of Danny Hebert breathed her final, and most poisonous curse.
Agreement
Error
Taylor screamed, and screamed, and screamed.
She screamed until her throat bled, and her voice failed her.
She was still silently screaming as the police came.
Error
Reset,
Reset,
Re-,
r-, r-,
Ride
RIDE
Scene Break
Emily Piggot, director of the Brockton Bay PRT looked down at the incident report in front of her. A young girl had been found by her mothers corpse, the older woman dead of a sudden heat attack that apparently would have been agonizing, if relatively quick.
Looking at the reports of the scars, mutilations, and signs of… other things present on the young girls body, Piggot couldn't help but think the bitch deserved far more. She had seen worse, but not much.
The girl, Taylor Hebert was her name, had her hair turn white as snow, and apparently stopped talking. The only reason the file was on her desk was because the girl had been confirmed as a parahuman by Panacea when Taylor had been brought to her for healing. Panacea hadn't been able to fix the girls voice however, the issue being both mental and physical, the healer only being a bee to deal with the latter.
But now the problem was Piggot had a 16 year old para-human with unknown powers, who had committed no crime, had a fully payed off house that had been willed to her in her mother and fathers wills, not to mention was legally emancipated, and hadn't that been a surprise when it first came across her desk, apparently Taylor had tried to leave her mother before, had gotten the papers signed but had never moved out.
Piggot sighed. She felt for the teen, really she did, but the girl was unresponsive to anything outside a normal routine, outright ignored any offers that had anything to do with the PRT, the Wards, or even simple power testing.
Piggot sighed again as she wen't over the paperwork. It mentioned a desire to go to Arcadia, and the least the director could do to help someone as much as Taylor had to stay on the straight and narrow would be to get her going to a school she wanted to be at.
If it also included mandatory Psych evals, a far more welcoming environment that was less likely to send a newly triggered parahuman on a rampage, the Wards, and both Glory Girl and Panacea just in case… Well, there was a reason Emily Piggot was the director of a city with the most parahumans per capita in the country.
Scene Break
Taylor looked into her cup of tea as though it contained all the mysteries of life. The annoying people in uniforms had left a few hours ago, promising to return tomorrow with further talk.
That was all they seemed to do, talk, talk, talk. Taylor idly wondered what good it did her, they were full of sorrowful words about her loss that had slowly morphed into pitying looks when they had found her marks, both old and new.
Taylor sipped her tea.
The people in uniform had tried asking where they had come from but she had just ignored them. Then two people in costume had tired asking her to join the wards. She idly wondered what their names had been.
The woman with the U.S.A. bandana mask had been nice, if annoying. All in all she had appreciated the man in the mechanical suit more, he had been direct and to the point.
Taylor sipped at her tea.
She had ignored them both, ignored them until they returned her to her house. The hospital where she had been staying earlier had been… less then pleasant. The doctors and nurses had tried to take pictures of her marks, but she had refused, pulling herself out of their hands, and a few days later they had given up, and released her.
Taylor lifted her left wrist up to her eyes. On the inside of her left forearm was a tattoo of a red sword, with a single drop of blood, just about to fall from its point. It had been there for the past few days, and she wasn't quite sure what to do with it.
Taylor knew she had never gotten a tattoo before, her mother would have never allowed it, but nevertheless it was there.
Taylor sipped her her tea.
The worst part of the tattoo was its presence in her mind. She seemed to think about the crimson sword a every minute. Sometimes if she wasn't careful she would catch her fingers, caressing the sword, carefully tracing down its length till her slim fingers reached the blood drop. Other times she would catch herself scratching at her new body art so much the skin would rip, tear… Bleed.
Taylor sipped her tea.