Heroics 1.4
Being friends with these two was kind of weird for Taylor if she was being completely honest. Emma had issues, it was clear to her and probably even Sophia to some extent, those issues were mostly caused by the incident that she had gotten into the summer before they had started highschool. It had caused her to try and break connections with Taylor, but Taylor refused. Taylor saw that if she let herself get pushed away it could possibly be the end of their friendship and not only that, but Emma was traumatized or something. It was the responsibility of friends to look out for each other, but more importantly it was the job a hero to help people. Even if she only got her powers awhile after her Mom died, when she had...nope she wasn't going to think about that anymore. So, she had took it upon herself to figure out what had happened. From repeatedly going over to her house, to following her around school, to eventually confronting her about the issue. It had been tough, really tough but whenever she felt ready to give up, she had felt her heroes pushing her to keep trying. It took awhile, but she fixed things even if Emma had become a little...clingy.
Sophia was a whole can of worms of her own. She had been the one that had been backing Emma's decision to cut her off making the process even worse for Taylor. Sophia...there was something wrong with her too, Taylor didn't know exactly what it was. It was like she held disdain for anyone she saw as being weak, and it gave her this really screwy world view. It was actually the main reason that Sophia had been trying to aggravate her so much, or at least that was Taylor thought, she seemed to think that Taylor was weak in her mindset. Taylor couldn't help but remember how they had settled there dispute, getting into a fight with a Track-Star had definitely been a bad idea. She had gotten bruised up pretty bad, but Sophia also had a black-eye, that was the last time she tried the way of making friends described in the webcomics she read every now and then. They worked, but darn did it hurt. Now she had to just put up with Sophia's aggressive form of friendship. Taking a bite of the sandwich Emma had made for her, she thought about what exactly she could to understand Sophia better.
"Taylor, were you listening?"
"Huh?"
"Come on Taylor," Emma whined from her seat next to her. "I was asking if you would be up to going to the mall with meafter school is over. This new store opened up recently and I was thinking that we could go and get some cute clothes, I saw this especially cute looking dress that you would look good in. So how bout it Taylor, you gonna come with me?"
Taylor didn't even really like dresses like that, and she doubted that she'd be able to afford more than a couple shirts or jeans, but looking into Emma's eye she could see the hint of worry and that was enough for her to nod a little wearily. A hero's job was a tough one to say the least.
"Yay!" Grabbing hold Taylor's arm, Emma proceeded to nuzzle it happiness.
"I'll be coming with." Sophia said in a tone that would not allow any argument.
Taylor promptly tried her hardest to ignore the death glare that she was getting from Sophia as Emma held onto her arm for the rest of the lunch period, seemingly lost in her own little happy world. She also tried to ignore the whispers she could make out a couple tables away in the lunchroom about her and Emma were a couple which Sophia seemed to hear as well which resulted in her glare becoming glacial. A hero knew when to pick their battles, and this was simply a battle that could not be won. Truly, being a hero was the hardest of tasks.
After her rather easy classes, which was less a result of cheating and more that she actually studied her butt off when she really tried, Taylor found herself at the most dreaded of places. The mall, a place where you could find yourself buying clothes you didn't even know you wanted or useless knick-knacks that you were tricked into buying, truly this place was a hero's worst enemy. Money problems were serious in the comic book hero world, simply ask Peter Parker. However, seeing the happy look on Emma's face as she led Taylor and Sophia, who was making sure that the contact between Taylor and Emma was kept at a minimum, was worth it she thought.
"Ooh, how about this?" Emma had somehow taken them into a store without Taylor noticing and was currently holding up a red dress, it looked nice.
"It would look good on you." Both Taylor and Sophia said at the same time.
"Oh, well if you both think so I think I'll buy it then. Let me just go try it on, you both go sit on the benches and wait for me."
And so it was with great amounts of awkwardness that Taylor and Sophia found themselves waiting for their mutual friend to finish on trying on the new dress, but Taylor knew she'd probably find more along the way, and get back to them. You could cut the tension in the air with a knife because it was so thick, Taylor really didn't know if her and Sophia were actually all cleared up. Sophia would always give her this evaluating look when she thought Taylor wasn't looking, like she was trying to figure her out or something. It was unnerving, but even more awkward were the times when it felt like she wanted to say something to her but couldn't. Maybe...maybe she just needed a conversation starter. Okay Taylor, she thought to herself, we can do this. Just have to find some way to talk to her. Looking around the store it felt like she could find nothing that she could try and talk to Sophia about, she decided to improvise.
"Sooo...who's your favourite hero?"
"What?"
"I mean, like, do you have a favourite hero from comic books or something?"
"You...you still read comic books. I should've expected."
"Hey, don't knock the comic books! They're some of the most coolest things I've read and teach me so much."
At Taylor's somewhat flustered response, Sophia just stared at her, and after a moment something unexpected happened. Sophia started laughing. Sophia started laughing. Taylor didn't know how to feel that she might've just accidentally triggered the apocalypse with her love of comic books. While she was panicking entirely on how the heck she was going to diffuse such a bomb, Sophia's laughter slowly died down until she had a small smile on her face.
"Man, this is all sorts of fucked. If you must know, my favorite hero would have to be Batman."
"What? That guy's barely a hero sometimes." Taylor responded unconsciously.
"Hey! He does what he needs to get his city cleaned up."
"Other heroes do that too and they don't have to be nearly as dark and broody as he is, neither do they have to go to extreme lengths and badly hurt normal people to do that most of the time."
From there the conversation devolved into who's hero was better, and things such as why Batman was totally the hero that Brockton deserved or why Flash was one of the greatest heroes of time and to even more mundane things such as what powers would it be cool to have from the comic books. When Emma arrived to see her two best friends engaged in a heated debate she thought they'd fight again, instead there were smiles on their face as they argued. Maybe they'd get along after all.
