Dear Guest (and everyone else who's thinking this lol),
Congratulations on finding out that this fic has devolved into trashy bullshit.
Except, well, joke's on you, especially since I've pretty much started taking the piss out of things on purpose. I mean, in the last chapter, Taylor and Emma were fighting robots with their hands, and didn't even comment on how weird it was.
I hope you live a long, prosperous life of leaving useless reviews which do nothing which fill the people you're trying to insult with nothing but pure, unadulterated joy.
Sincerely,
Tgonthefiery
I decided to change up my original plans – originally, Taylor eventually abandons Emma after realizing that she hasn't changed at all, but then I realized that doing that would ruin the spirit of the entire thing: a fic which was enjoyable but also made absolutely no sense whatsoever. I don't know if this is enjoyable, but I do know that it makes no sense whatsoever. (Seriously, I don't know if you guys notice the shit these people do, but in retrospect it can make zero common sense.) And I aim to continue this trend. Because, once again, this is no longer something I see going very far. I'm currently working on an original story with a friend, and if that goes anywhere? Well, we shall see.
Also, I decided that I don't want Perks anymore. Seriously, I can't be bothered to do any more math for this fic than is absolutely necessary. So please ignore all the mentions of PP in the previous chapters.
Random reference to Ancient Egyptian mythology which barely counts as a reference, in here. Just saying.
Also, Taylor makes lasagna. My mind is so bogged down by fanon that I can't remember if her mom actually made her lasagna or not, but please, just accept it. Remember what this fic is supposed to be.
Restart 2.3
I wasn't sure when I'd started to consider Emma as a friend again. It definitely hadn't been when I'd found her in the back of the ABB truck. Nor the day we'd kicked Sophia's ass. Perhaps it was when she'd revealed her power to me. To expose that, to someone who had every right to hate her, despise her? That took trust. Trust which might have been misplaced, at least at first.
In.
Out.
Emma had always been too trusting, too willing to latch onto someone she'd never met, take the word of any random person on the street. In a way, it had been a good quality, at first. Sophia had ruined that too. Sophia Hess had ruined a lot of things. My friendship with Emma. My school life. My perception of the local heroes. Because if they could let someone like her into their ranks and treat it like it was nothing, what else were they willing to do?
In.
Out.
A lot, probably. The ends justify the means, and all of that crap. I could imagine them spouting lines of pretty words at the crowds, as they probably made shady deals to satisfy the gangs in the city, or whatever else was needed to keep the peace. The worst part was that I couldn't even blame them for what they were probably doing. For letting Sophia into their ranks. Now, keeping her there, that I could blame them for. But the rest? No. That was just human.
In.
Out.
How many times had I done something questionable because I'd reasoned to myself that it would be worth it in the end? Probably a couple, maybe more which I couldn't remember. As much as I hated the idea, it was unfortunately true, and that meant that blaming others for doing the same things as I did was stupid in of itself.
In.
Out.
I opened my eyes, smiling when I saw the screen in front of me.
Meditation is LV. 3!
Meditation took time to level up – a long time. But I supposed that it would be worth it in the long run, considering that my HP and MP REG would be boosted by 10% per LV whenever I was meditating. That meant that I would be able to level up any MP based Skills much more efficiently – not that I'd even started. I hadn't bothered to try using Virus Slash yet, considering that it was probably extremely loud.
I allowed myself to relax, flopping back on my bed. But not sleeping – there was no point in sleeping now.
Options.
Sound
Map
Recording
Sound.
Volume: - 5 -
Current Track (Auto):
Bedroom
Change Track?
Change Track.
No Tracks Available
Unlock Tracks by completing Quests and Achievements
"Crap," I swore half-heartedly. Stupid system kept giving me hope, and then sending me back down in the dumps. I narrowed my eyes. "Wait." Achievements? When had Achievements ever been a thing?
Achievements Menu can be viewed after completing 15 Quests. Any Achievements completed without knowledge or view of Achievements Menu will still give rewards.
And how many Quests had I already done, exactly?
14/15 Quests completed.
"Are you fucking with me?" I deadpanned. "This better be a joke."
14/15 Quests completed.
"Dammit." I rolled over in bed, stuffing my face into my pillow. This was why I hated my power, sometimes. It had the most irritating way of getting information across – making you find it yourself.
"Well, shit," I muttered. "Stuff to do. Something to do. Something Quest material." I checked the time; 5:00 PM. Could I make dinner, maybe?
Quest: Make Dinner!
Go downstairs and… make food. Maybe eat it.
Success: + 75 XP, A meal (Unless you botch it)
Failure: Your dad makes dinner. That's… not that bad.
What?
No, no. Screw the failure option. I was making dinner, alright. I walked quickly down the stairs, accidentally tripping over on the last step and stumbling into a wall, as I tried to figure out what my dad would appreciate the most for dinner.
(T)
"This is wonderful," Dad said, in a way which made me wonder if he was actually serious. For all I knew, it was horrible.
"Thanks," I replied half-heartedly as I bit into the lasagna, fairly certain that it was completely average in every way. "Uh, which part?" Dad didn't reply; he just kept eating, staring wistfully as his plate.
Ah.
That makes sense.
It was Mom, wasn't it? It was always Mom, it always came back to her somehow. She'd made lasagna for us, when she was still… around. It had been delicious, and while I was using Mom's recipe, I was pretty sure that it was nowhere near as good as hers. Maybe Dad was just being wrapped up in good memories. Or I'd accidentally started to make him feel those feelings of loss again.
Fuck.
"So. Um, what did you do today?" he asked suddenly, once he had swallowed his food. "Anything interesting?"
"Eh." I shrugged. "I hung out with Emma."
"And how was that?" Another shrug.
"Alright." I gave him my best smile. "Same as usual. What about you?"
"Ah," he muttered. "Today was… relatively normal."
"Relatively?" I asked.
"Not sure how else to put it." He took another bite of his lasagna, face furrowing. He swallowed, then spoke. "You remember Gerry?"
"Vaguely," I replied. I didn't remember Gerry at all. Thankfully, Dad either must have expected that, or something in my expression gave it away.
"Eh, big, burly guy. Black Irish. You probably met him when you visited me at work?" I nodded at him – I did remember someone like that. "Well, I'm fairly certain that's he's going to be quitting on me."
"Really?"
"Yeah. I've got word that he's… looking for another job. Something… less than legal." I consciously leaned in closer.
"Oh?"
"Mm. You know Uber and Leet?" I snorted.
"He wants to be a henchman?"
"That's what I've heard," he replied. "None of it's set in stone, but…"
"Things are shitty."
"Yeah. That. Worst thing is, it wouldn't be the first time."
"Yeah. That's rough." I frowned, then leaned in closer. "Jeez Dad, it's getting cold. Don't let it freeze over."
The rest of dinner was carried out in blissful silence, apart from the occasional car passing by, and me and Dad's cutlery scraping on the plates. I occupied myself by looking through my Achievements menu, which was… depressingly empty.
Achievements
Completed: 0
Just Getting Started
-Create your own hero team
Rewards:
-5000 XP
-$500
-Additional Party Slots: 2
Mutual Benefit
-Create a partnership with the Protectorate
Rewards:
-7500 XP
-$750
Fucking Nazis
-Defeat 100 E88 Thugs
Rewards:
-10,000 XP
-$500
Emperor's Crown
-Defeat Kaiser
Rewards:
-15,000 XP
-$1000
-Skill Book: Silver Spear
Azn Bruzd Boyz
-Defeat 100 ABB Thugs
Rewards:
-10,000 XP
-$500
Dragon Slayer
-Defeat Lung
Rewards:
-25,000 XP
-$1500
-Skill Book: Fireball
-Skill Book: Summon Drake
Merchant Overdose
-Defeat 100 Merchant Thugs
Rewards:
-10,000 XP
-$500
Stain of Honor
-Defeat Skidmark
Rewards:
-12,500 XP
-$750
-Skill Book: Repel
Clean Up the Bay
-Eliminate all criminal gangs within Brockton Bay
Rewards:
-35,000 XP
-$2000
Lightning Rod
-Fend off Behemoth
Rewards:
-100,000 XP
-$20,000
-Skill Book: ?
The Fall
-Defeat Behemoth
Rewards:
-500,000 XP
-$100,000
-Skill Book: ?
Storm Warning
-Fend off Leviathan
Rewards:
-100,000 XP
-$20,000
-Skill Book: ?
Tide Changer
-Defeat Leviathan
Rewards:
-500,000 XP
-$100,000
-Skill Book: ?
Song of the Nightingale
-Fend off the Simurgh
Rewards:
-100,000 XP
-$20,000
-Skill Book: ?
Dying Song
-Defeat the Simurgh
Rewards:
-500,000 XP
-$100,000
-Skill Book: ?
More Achievements coming soon!
Ha. Ha, ha, ha.
Well played, stupid power. I was only close to completing one of these, and I was pretty sure that it wouldn't count me and Emma making a pact in a dilapidated scrapyard as us forming a hero team. Seriously, what was with all this? Defeat 100 Thugs? Eliminate all gangs? Fight Lung and win? And, I'm sorry, did this thing actually expect me to be able to defeat goddamned Endbringers?
Well, maybe it didn't, considering half of the… Endbringer Achievements were only saying to "fend off" their respective tyrannical monster. But then again, the other half were… yeah.
I wasn't going to be completing any of these Achievements soon.
Later, as I washed the dishes (and oh hey, a new skill!), I couldn't help but wonder if these… Achievements, as they were called, would begin to blind me. Make me take a path I wouldn't have otherwise. The goals they outlined weren't just lofty and ambitious, I was fairly certain that some of them were impossible. No one had ever killed an Endbringer. That wasn't a thing that happened. They'd lost limbs, been heavily damaged, but they'd always managed to retreat, some way or another, usually by cleaving their way through the defending forces and causing even more damage. Behemoth? He'd sooner dig into the ground than allow himself to be killed, from what I knew. Leviathan? A single tidal wave crashing over the city, and no one would even notice him leaving amongst the dozens of floating corpses. The Simurgh? Ha. Most people couldn't even get close enough to deal real damage without sacrificing their life.
Also, defeating Lung? Even that alone would be more than challenging. He got stronger the longer he fought – how was I supposed to beat that? How was I even meant to survive that?
'Teamwork, duh,' was the extremely obvious and irritating answer which came to me. Of course, that also meant that any teammates I had would also be put at risk. That wasn't something I particularly wanted or needed. I would have to think over this carefully, if anything. I didn't currently have any Quests, but I was probably going to receive one or two tomorrow. Achievements could wait for when I was ready. Well, for when we were ready. I thought of Emma, of the enormous projection standing over her. Beating things into the ground.
Yeah. We.
I placed the last dish on the drying rack, dried my hands with the hand towel hanging near the sink. I could think this over in the morning.
(T)
"Seriously?" I muttered as Emma smirked at me from across the lunch table. I was relying on the constant bustle of students around us to drown out any possibility of someone overhearing. There was still a risk, and that was a concern, but Emma refused to go back to the roof, treating it like it was the plague or something. "You want me to go swimming. In the bay."
"Can't be that bad." She shrugged, biting into her sandwich (because cafeteria food was shit). "Besides, this'll be good for you, won't it?"
"Explanation, please," I said. I wasn't exactly against her idea. I just had no idea where she was even coming from with this.
"Okay," she said, leaning in closer. "Well, ignoring the fact that swimming's a thing that'll probably be levelled up, I was thinking, you had something called Heat Resistance, right?"
"Um. Yes."
"The bay is cold. You get me?"
"Ah." I nodded. If there was a Heat Resistance, it was hard to believe that there wouldn't be a Cold Resistance. "I get you."
"Okay. So. Not only that, but it'll probably help you breathe better. And… well. You remember the Difficulty Settings."
"Oh." I smiled. That was kind of clever. "It's an isolated spot. If I change the Settings…"
"Shouldn't put anyone in harm's way," Emma finished. "Well, it works. Right?"
"Yeah." I frowned. "And you?"
"Me? Oh, don't worry about that. I didn't come up with this without at least doing some testing." I stared at her in confusion, before I closed my eyes.
"Fucking hell, Emma."
"What?" she said.
"You tried to drown yourself, didn't you?" I asked, trying not to sound too judgmental.
"I was pretty sure it wasn't going to work," Emma grumbled back, before stuffing her mouth with bread again.
"You were pretty sure."
"Mmphhm."
"Okay. Okay- oh, goddammit." I slammed my head against the table, hard enough that I lost a hitpoint for it. "You're going to be the death of me." I got the impression that Emma was probably gazing at me innocently, but I refused to look up. Nope. I wasn't letting her get to me.
"Well, can we at least try it?" she asked. "I think it'll work. Even if the enemies end up being too difficult, we can pull out at any time. Just, level up your swimming first? Everything which might be useful down there – I think it'll be more about speed than maneuverability down there."
"Dodging's always important."
"And you need speed to dodge," Emma pointed out. "If I travel within my projections, I can get tugged along with them, so the water doesn't really affect me much. You? You need to be fast. Besides, I literally can't drown as long as my projections are out." Unfortunately, if Emma did understand her power correctly, then she had more of an advantage than I did when underwater. If we really did end up training underwater, defeating mobs and the like, I was going to have to train myself up first.
"I'll… go swimming," I muttered. "Tonight. Experiment and all of that."
"You do that," she said happily, before cheerily finishing off her sandwich. "Meanwhile, I'm going to keep looking."
"For what?"
"Isolated spots. Like, extremely isolated spots. With no one around."
"Desert? Boat Graveyard?"
"Fuck the Boat Graveyard. Every new cape goes there to test whatever power they have – the PRT watches that place like crazy."
"How do you know that?" I asked. Seriously. I was curious.
"PHO. Where else?" Emma responded, rolling her eyes. "Everyone knows. Seriously. People have found cameras and shit."
"That's really fucking ominous. They just watch capes and stuff? Isn't it bad to know another cape's identity?"
"Hell yes. I'm fairly certain that they don't give a shit, though, unless said cape is Protectorate or Wards. Pretty sure that they use their identities to coerce them into joining or something. That's why we've gotta find somewhere isolated. Where nowhere else is. And I'm not talking any more scrapyards. Half of those are Merchant territory. We don't want to mess with gangs just yet."
"In the future though?" I asked. Emma gave me a deadpan stare.
"Taylor, we're going to be heroes in Brockton Bay, you really think the gangs are going to be ignored?"
"Fuck no," I replied. "But said gangs are powerful. There's a reason they're still here."
"What? You think they're so powerful that the Protectorate couldn't just bring in Legend for an hour or two to clear them out?" Emma snorted. "Nah. They keep them around for a reason. Because it upsets this status quo they've established. This isn't ideal, but if they get rid of these gangs, they're going to upset the others. Create power vacuums, send a message that says that they're willing to do whatever it takes to take them out, and then the gangs emulate them – doing whatever it takes. The only gang that I reckon they couldn't take is the ABB. Because, well, Lung."
"That's a shitty status quo."
"Oh god, I know. Believe me." Emma laughed uncomfortably, biting her bottom lip. "I was almost a fucking sex slave because of that status quo. Because of… Lung. The ABB. The gangs, this bullshit." She looked me in the eye, and I saw the rage in them, the urge, the desire to end the way things were. "We can't let that keep happening," she said softly, but her voice, her tone, it was dangerous. "The Protectorate, the Wards? They have orders from their higher ups. Their hands are tied. New Wave? Fuck, they try their best, but… they can't cover everything. You know the Wards are supposed to just help young parahumans learn how to control and use their powers? Look how they use them here." Emma smiled. "They're fucking child soldiers."
Yeah. Yeah, I could see it. I saw what she meant. I hated that I agreed with her, not that things were messed up, but that they could be so much better, if only people weren't being prevented from taking action because of some bullshit idiot giving them all the wrong orders. That wasn't right. That – fuck, it just wasn't.
"You see it too. Don't you?" Emma asked me. I gave her a hesitant nod.
"Yeah," I said.
"Then you know what we have to do."
"Yeah," I repeated. Emma smiled at me from across the table.
"Perfect."
(T)
I took the plunge the afternoon into freezing cold water, the cold engulfing me like a tidal wave crashing over a person's head. At first, I could barely see, and barely even move. But my power started to compensate for that, as my vision cleared the tiniest bit, enough that I could make out the vague outline of a plastic bag floating in the murky water.
God, this was disgusting. I'd known that the bay was filthy, but this was worse than anything I'd ever imagined. The amount of… garbage that I came across was horrendous. Not just the bags – milk cartons and worn shoes, a strand of fishing line with the hook still attached. Yeah, I was Inventorying that – no way that shit was safe. Some little fishy was going to come and kill itself on that, one day. Although, I didn't exactly see any fish around here, and I was honestly glad about that. There was no way that this would be good for any of them.
And it was cold too. I was wearing a bathing suit I'd bought from the money me and Emma had been rewarded for defeating the enemies in the scrapyard. It had been the least revealing one I could find in the store, and the man at the counter had been giving me strange looks, so I'd just gotten out of there as quickly as possible. Now I was wondering if I should have purchased goggles (even though I had around $5 left, and no one sold goggles that cheap).
You have unlocked the Passive Ability 'Swimming'!
You have unlocked the Passive Ability 'Cold Damage Resistance'!
Finally.
I resurfaced for air, gasping for breath as my head broke through the surface of the water. I hadn't moved far from the shore, but I felt tired. My Stamina had been sapped away even faster than when I'd been running, and that was already pretty bad. I was hoping that eventually, swimming would be just as easy as running was. It would take work, but eventually, I'd manage it. I dipped my head back into the water and started again.
You have unlocked the Passive Ability 'Increased Lung Capacity'!
Swimming is LV. 2!
Cold Damage Resistance is LV. 2!
Swimming is LV.3!
Increased Lung Capacity is LV. 2!
Cold Damage Resistance is LV. 3!
Cold Damage Resistance is LV. 4!
Eventually, I had stopped swimming. I sat in the water, my head still above the surface, but the water was still affecting me. Cold Damage Resistance wasn't going as fast as it had, but it was still climbing nicely. Funnily enough, I wasn't even receiving damage from the cold, but powers were finnicky like that. The sky was darkening, the bright sky blue giving way to darker shades as the sun made its annual voyage across the sky.
I had created a Virus Slash, just for the hell of it. It had been a neon green blade, sort of like a crescent in shape. I'd thrown it down towards the seabed, and apparently struck nothing but the sand. But I had to admit, it had been a pretty good glowstick. I'd seen something down there, as it made its way down. A structure of some kind. At first, I'd assumed that it was the distortions of the water. But then I'd realized what it was. It was a sunken ship. An honest to god sunken ship – and an old one. One of those cliché pirate ships you saw in movies. With the whole tall mast and jolly roger. But it had been the design which startled me. Because it had occurred to me then that the ship wasn't something which had already been here. No. This had been created by my power, brought into the world for something.
Where I sat, shivering in the cold water, I sent Emma a message.
Taylor: I found a shipwreck while I was swimming around.
Emma didn't take long to reply.
Emma: You mean the graveyard?
Taylor: No, like, an actual pirate ship. I think my power created it, like, spawned it in.
Emma: Shit. You didn't do anything, right?
Taylor: I didn't go down.
Emma: Good. We'll wait till the weekend, then we'll look.
Taylor: What about now?
Emma: You keep swimming. We don't know what's down there. We need to be as prepared as we possibly can.
Taylor: Alright. So, weekend?
Emma: Weekend. See you tomorrow.
Taylor: Yeah. Bye.
I stood up, walking out of the water and switching out my wet clothes for my dry ones. Thankfully, the water slipped right off my body the moment I got out of the water. Game physics, I supposed.
Emma was right. Preparation was key. We didn't know what was down there. I thought of Virus Slash, a ranged attack which had yet to be levelled up. Something which could be potentially useful, but was currently fairly useless.
I would have to change that.
