Expansion 20.z (Interlude: Taylor)
Taylor stared at the space where Lee had just teleported away from, her words, which were more than words, resting oddly on her lips. Lee often spoke, more and more, with words that weren't words, at least not in English, but she still somehow understood them. Though she couldn't say why. Only that it had to do with powers, and Shards, and things that none of them really understood.
And then she'd heard the Morrigan talk.
No, she was The Morrigan. There was a difference. One Taylor couldn't really explain.
The plant-using Case 53 didn't talk at all, her words not heard, but felt, sensations of leaves rustling in the wind, of flowers blooming, of branches swaying, and of the growth of a thousand forests all merging together to make words that weren't words. In some ways, it reminded Taylor of her swarm-speech, taking the noises her various insects could make and, through carefully combining them, she could create something that sounded like English enough to be understood as English.
Approaching it that way, she'd somehow managed to speak the same way The Morrigan did, the same way that Lee had, echoing his meaning, but with her own 'spin' to it. Before, when she'd tried to repeat what he'd said exactly, making the same sounds, she'd failed terribly, but it was only now that she realized that it wasn't just sound. It was something else. Something they could record, but hadn't understood. Something even she didn't understand.
W̵e̴ ̵s̶h̵o̶u̷l̸d̵ ̴l̶e̸a̸v̵e̸,̵ The Morrigan said, the woman's words a little hard to parse, her speech silent yet somehow loud, breaking Taylor from her thoughts.
Oh, right. The dead.
Seeing Lee tear apart an entire Protectorate team, was it weird that her main thought had been about how happy he'd seemed? It had worried her, because while she could feel the amusement/joy/interest from him, underneath that was a whisper of despair/fatigue/rage that didn't quite ever go away. It clung to his thoughts, but had been slowly lessening these last few days, only to come back as strong as it had been before they'd left Brockton Bay when he'd seen them this morning, then it had spiked to a level even worse than that when they'd come face to face with the Protectorate.
Almost as bad as when she'd found him that night, after Echidna's death.
And that feeling hadn't disappeared when he'd fought, or lessened, only. . . sublimated into something else, but still there.
So now she was looking at a bloody battlefield, half a dozen 'heroes' dead in just over a minute, along with a couple dozen PRT, and Taylor found that she really didn't care about them at all.
What was her life?
Better question: How bad were things, that this made sense?
But The Morrigan was right, they needed to go. Turning to the woman, Taylor cleared her throat. "Yeah we should leave," she said, trying to 'say' it, but it didn't quite work. Before she could try again The Morrigan was already walking away, so while the woman couldn't talk, she could understand Taylor, which was good.
"Wait!" Deleter started to order, taking a step forward, and Taylor could see The Morrigan tense, about to do. . . something, so Taylor beat her to the punch, using Kaiser's power to grow a metal spear up from the ground in front of the 'hero', since none of the Protectorate here could really be called heroes, but unlike the green woman would've, from what little Taylor had seen of the woman in combat, the bug controller made sure to stop her creation a foot away from the Protectorate member's chest, instead of a foot into it.
Focusing on the other woman, Taylor reached for that sense of. . . other, and this time, when she spoke, she was still speaking English, but there was something more to her words, which weren't the hissing Lee made, or the feeling she got from The Morrigan. They were still English, but below that was the blended sensation of trees swaying in the breeze, metal sliding on metal, and the tapping of a thousand insectoid legs united in single purpose. "We're leaving. You should too," she advised the Protectorate cape, and the other woman flinched, before nodding, grabbing Impetus, and running off in the opposite direction.
Jogging herself to catch up with The Morrigan, Taylor fell in step with the green woman who gave her an assessing look. Y̴o̵u̸ ̸a̴r̶e̶ ̷n̶o̸t̸ ̴l̴i̶k̵e̷ ̷t̷h̵e̵ ̵o̶t̷h̵e̴r̷s̷,̸ the alien looking parahuman said. Taylor concentrated on her words, focusing while also trying to relax and not force it, to let understanding come naturally to the insect controller, as it seemed to come to Lee, as it was more and more to her as she listened to the other woman's way of speaking, and only then did she understand the other woman's words.
"I mean, sort of?" she responded. "I've mostly been learning from Lee."
Lee? the green woman asked, then nodded. Y̷o̷u̷ m̷e̷a̷n̷ Vejovis.
"Same person, Vejovis is just his Hero name," Taylor explained, wondering why she had to explain that to this other woman. This was basic stuff, but she didn't know it? Lee had said The Morrigan grew up sheltered, but to not even know this much, something about it caught her attention.
And not in a good way.
But they were allies, and this would be something she talked to Lee about later. Or. . . talked to Lee about. Yeah, that was going to take some getting used to, but somehow described him better. As they headed into the man-made forest, the normal trails disappeared, and Taylor realized that The Morrigan had grown this area out. Grabbing a twig, Taylor tossed it behind them, shaping it into a tree to block off their trail going in, but while she could approximate roots and branches, her power couldn't make leaves.
Then she felt it, The Morrigan's power, and realized just how strong the other woman was as a sense of overwhelming GROWTH surged through, and along, her own power, enough that she stumbled, but the extra whatever didn't fight her, merely correcting the flaws in what she'd made, small changes to turn uniform wood into proper tree parts, a full set of leaves sprouting in an instant, making her creation a fully grown tree in truth.
Lee hadn't mentioned the extent of the other woman's power, but, knowing him, he probably didn't notice. If Taylor hadn't worked with him for weeks, she probably would've dropped to her knees, or even passed out at the sensation, but now it only surprised her, adding another clue to the mystery of who this woman was.
And she only needed one more.
"Thanks," Taylor smiled, and The Morrigan nodded back to her, with a slight smile of her own. "Quick Question. Can you talk," the bug controller took a moment to stop adding that extra layer to her words, something that had nothing to do with her throat, and continued, "like this? It's okay if you can't."
The other woman's smile dropped. I can not. I tried, but it did not work. I was not understood.
"Can you try with me?" Taylor requested, trying her best to be friendly about it. "I'll understand if you can't. But maybe I can help!"
As they reached the center of the mini-forest, Taylor looking through the eyes of the insects around them to see the trees shifting slightly in a way that had nothing to do with wind, then The Morrigan hesitantly nodded. The green skinned woman opened her mouth, and what came out was a high-pitched, oddly tonal screech that would've probably been painful to hear if Lee's upgrading of Taylor's body hadn't also made her a lot tougher, even that way.
It sounded a bit like autotuned steam.
Which told Taylor exactly who this was.
She held up a hand, telling the other woman, "It might be something with your vocal cords. We've got someone back home that could probably tell you what it is, and fix it, if you want."
The Morrigan nodded. Is that who made you more than a normal Host?
'Host'? If I needed it, there's an extra clue on top. "Oh, no. That's Lee. He's the one who made me. . . more," she blushed a little, thinking of the bit of himself that still sat inside her. Not that way, and not the time, she told herself, refocusing. "The Greenway Gang, the plant using. . . Hosts, they couldn't understand you, could they?"
The could not, the woman agreed sadly. They were inferior to you and Vejovis.
"We've got some people like that in New Brockton Bay. We brought one here, but she had problems," Taylor pointed out, wondering if The Morrigan realized what she was doing. "Hearing you hurt her."
The Case 53 did know what she had done, from her frown, her downcast gaze, and her response of, Please send her my apologies. I did not mean to harm her. Does that mean I cannot come with you?
"We'll figure something out," Taylor told the other woman with an encouraging smile, glad it hadn't been on purpose. She had a feeling that, if it had been on purpose, Hedera wouldn't've survived. "It's part of your power, just one you don't know how to control yet. We've had a few people like that." And if it was an un-controllable part of her power, the heroine knew it would only be a matter of time before Lee could help with that too, finally understanding what had happened, and how it had gone wrong.
Lee had talked to her about the Vials, and how the 'Dead' Shards worked. How Cauldron had hundreds of holding cells in their base filled with people who had been changed by their powers, like Case 53's, but far, far worse. The Case 53's were human-ish, and had agreed to be experiments instead of dying in accordance to their original fates, letting Cauldron refine their crude method of making Vials from bits of dead Entity, and were thus allowed to try and make their way in this world with their memories erased, but Vials were sold off and given out to people all the time, and Cauldron's methods weren't anywhere close to perfect.
The Morrigan's father, who might have even gotten a Vial from Cauldron himself, had gotten one for his daughter, but something had gone wrong. Very wrong. She'd gotten power, an amazing amount of power, one on par with Cauldron's first tests, instead of the Vials they gave out nowadays. But Cauldron's first tests kept the person human only one in seven times, two of seven dying instantly, and the other four mutating horribly.
But those that had survived?
The ones that stayed human?
They were on a whole 'nother level.
Legend.
Eidolon.
The Siberian.
Alexandria.
So The Morrigan had been given a Vial, one of the special ones, and while it hadn't killed her, or turned her into something truly inhuman, it had still changed her to the point she could no longer talk. To the point that she'd lost memories, or maybe Cauldron had gotten their hands on her and she'd escaped, Lee having mentioned that they had someone who could erase memories, which was why Case 53's had amnesia. Then, either after her escape, or her capture, or maybe just because she would've been too disruptive to Cauldron's 'Path to Victory', they had killed her father.
It just made sense.
And it meant she needed their help.
Turning to the other woman, Taylor started to speak, but felt Lee's position in the city shift again, the man teleporting back to where he'd left them, and she reached out through the Insect Network to tell him where they were, only to feel his surprise/annoyance/amusement, and he was gone once more, teleporting away again and re-appearing on the outskirts of the city, at the edge of the Boston IN.
The Morrigan, caught her attention, pointing up, directing Taylor's copy of Brix's power high to indicate nearby rooftops. Are they with you?
Taylor looked up, finding the rooftops to be lacking in any insects, but through the eyes of others further away she spotted two figures in black, one's hand glowing sky blue in a way that either meant Tinkertech, or powers. Looking around, Taylor realized that on nine more rooftops there were a similar lack of any insects, shifting the way she perceived the Swarm to notice the blank spaces in the natural distribution of bugs that existed in every city. Past those voids, she noted that Accord's building was another one, while the place that Lee had gone to was a third null-area.
In the nine other blank spaces around them, she could see each held a pair of people, all dressed in black, but the signs of powers were clear, and several of them were pointing glowing limbs right at the two of them. Realization struck and Taylor flared her powers, growing three slanting sheets of metal up around her and The Morrigan in an instant, creating a pyramid that sealed them in a moment before several powers blasted towards them, striking the metal shields.
Electricity coursed through the steel, grounding itself in the dirt, one side heating while another was supercooled, impacts of something metal striking the electrified barrier, but Taylor wasn't idle, and neither was The Morrigan. The flora on a rooftop from a planter box exploding outwards in sudden growth even as the leaves lengthened and sharpened into blades, skewering the pair there, while under every pair the ground rippled and steel spears shot upwards, impaling three more attackers as the remaining parahumans. . . jumped off the rooftops?
It was only when they pulled up, their attackers flying through the air, either through powers or Tinkertech, that Taylor swore to herself as she realized they were now out of reach, but she had been working defensively as much as she offensively. While she'd been attacking she'd grabbed obsidian oak disks from pockets in her power-armor and turned her wood-creation power to full blast, making them grow downwards, under their metallic defenses, and out, forming a secondary layer of barriers, The Morrigan assisting her and causing the wood to grow even faster than Taylor could make it, enough to reform as fast as it was burnt, blasted, cut, and more.
Frozen wood splintered and exploded, but a layer of new growth directly under it was pushed outwards, as Taylor called forth the Swarm, but as soon as the wasps, flies, and more got close to their attackers, they instantly died, whatever was creating the 'anti-insect' field coming from devices their opponents were carrying.
"Break?" Taylor called, toggling her comms, but she received no response. "Lee? Overwatch? Anyone?" However she heard nothing, not even the noise of connection to the network their communication devices utilized, and she realized that she'd been isolated from the others.
With the enemies able to fly, this was the worst setup for her to fight in, pinned down and unable to get to safety, unable to call for help, her enemies out of range of her own attacks, easily flying away from reaching wooden tendrils and metal spears that took far too long to close the distance, having to rise over a hundred feet up, her opponents blasting those apart as well. It was turning into a battle of attrition, but Taylor found that she rarely felt any strain when using her powers these days, even when she pressed herself, likely Lee's doing, and another reason to appreciate him.
And The Morrigan, standing beside her?
The Morrigan wasn't worried at all, despite the ongoing assault she was fending off.
Which just made Taylor even more sure that the green-skinned woman was closer to the Triumvirate, in power, than normal Parahumans.
But. . . couldn't the Case 53 try a little harder to help?
"We're holding them back, but can you get them?" Taylor asked, furiously working. "They're out of range of my powers, but I don't know yours."
They are enemies? The other woman asked, looking at her directly despite the lightlessness of their impromptu bunker, only the sensors in Taylor's power armor letting her see her companion, and the bug controller looked at her incredulously, though maybe the green-skinned cape didn't get the meaning, as Taylor was fully armored up, and the other woman just waited patiently for a response.
"Yes! They're enemies! They're trying to kill us!" Taylor practically shouted, wincing at the woman's hurt expression, having to remind herself that The Morrigan probably had some kind of brain damage, or at least something had been changed in her head by her powers, replacing normal person knowledge with the same kind of power-understanding that Lee sometimes dropped without realizing he was saying anything odd. "Sorry. Yes. This isn't normal, they're trying to kill us. And we should kill them back."
There were two Parahumans who hadn't attacked them yet, and one pointed towards them, firing off a dull grey beam that cut through all of their wooden protections like it was nothing, but was stopped cold by their metallic defenses, now several layers deep.
An anti-plant power. That's. . . specific. Too specific, Taylor thought, as The Morrigan winced, visibly pained by the blow despite not being hit at all, turning to look in the direction of the person who launched the attack.
From below the flying defoliator came a burst of growth, coming up with a speed Taylor could never match, coming for the anti-plant blaster, who turned his specialty attack downwards, holding it off.
That is, until Taylor grew a metal cap on the top of The Morrigan's growth.
The inorganic material blocked the grey beam, allowing the pillar of grass to close, and the Blaster tried to fly away, but did so clumsily, clearly not used to moving through the air like Victoria, who had a flight power, would have, having to stop his attack, and in that moment the plant-life exploded forward, closing the last few dozen feet in an instant and catching the man, even as he tried to blast it away, and ripped him to pieces in an instant with surprising brutality.
. . . Okay, that works, Taylor thought, smiling at her ally, "Good job! Let's get the rest!"
However, the last parahuman, who had been holding an increasingly bright ball of energy, flew directly above them and dropped it. It came down a little slowly, not accelerating as if it were pulled by gravity, but the way the other attackers all retreated, though they were still firing, worried her. From the way that The Morrigan also looked up at it, the woman clearly feeling something that Taylor couldn't, it all led the bug controller to the conclusion that they did not want the two of them to get hit by it, but the way they were still being attacked, they couldn't dodge.
That was something The Morrigan seemed to realize as well, as the woman walked over to the bug-controller with a determined expression. Can you leave? she demanded, and Taylor shook her head. The ball of light continued to descend, and Taylor threw a solid stream of insects into it, to try and hold it off, but whatever it was burned through them like they weren't even there, worryingly like Lee's suns, only completely constrained.
The green skinned woman nodded to herself, hesitantly reaching out to grab Taylor's hand, her grip far stronger than it seemed, instructing the bug controller, Do not let go. I may not be able to find you if you do.
With those ominous words, The Morrigan fell backwards, into the grass beneath their feet, dragging Taylor with her.
Tensing as she instinctively felt like she'd slam face-first into the ground, despite being in bio-power armor, the grass rippled as if she'd dove through the surface of a lake, and her connection to the Insect Network was cut off in an instant. Even her suit was gone, not just her connection to it, but the power armor had suddenly ceased to exist.
She tried to look around, but she didn't have eyes, she didn't have anything, but she still was her, still had a hand, because she was holding onto The Morrigan-
The thought helped clarify things, defining what was The Morrigan and what was Taylor, and she opened eyes that weren't eyes, to look in a space that wasn't a space, and she Saw.
They were floating, drifting through an area of overgrowth that had no ground, no sky, no sense of up, or down, plants extending out in fractal patterns in every direction, but, staring at the flora, there were patterns, and currents, undergrowth seeming to flow like rivers of green in ways that she could almost read.
Looking around she, tried to reach out, not with her body, but with her powers, and while her main power, and Kaiser's, might as well not exist, Brix's tree growth power resonated with her, stretching outwards into the Sea of Growth, towards bits that were somehow hers.
DO YOU WISH TO GO THERE?
The question was blaring in her ears, almost painful, but nowhere near as intense as Lee had been, after Echidna, and Taylor looked back to The Morrigan, and froze at what she saw, her response dying on her lips, if she even had lips anymore.
Before, the Case 53 had been a woman, though a green one.
Now?
She was a Goddess.
The Morrigan's body was made of constantly shifting plant life. Perfect, yet utterly inhuman for it. Connected, yet separate from the Sea of Growth. The same size as she was before, yet with a depth that Taylor could not put into words.
Except. . . she could.
Because what she saw was The Morrigan, but Taylor was only now understanding what that meant. It was like reading about the sea, or loneliness, . . . or love. You could hear the word, know its definition, but you didn't know what it really meant, until you saw it for yourself.
And The Morrigan wasn't the only one who was different.
Looking at the. . . woman, Taylor's gaze dropped down to her own hand, still held, only it was no longer flesh and blood.
At first, she thought she was still wearing her armor, but her armor was a dark grey, and bulky, while her hand was thin, delicate, and covered in bright yellow chitin.
Looking down at herself, her body was different, changed, but somehow. . . right, as it was her. In every respect except species. Her body was still the same, the proportions of her body not changed, but now she was seemingly clad in a slim, curving exoskeleton made of Yellows with Grey accents, a little like a wasp's, though somehow different, graceful and almost feminine in a way she normally never felt in her other body, but there was still more to her. Steel had been worked into the Grey, covered in fractal patterns that reminded her of webbing, and bits of Black Wood worked into the Yellow, the grain similarly decorated, both pulsing with the Shards she'd been gifted by Lee.
It could almost be armor, except it was too small, too tight, too. . . her, and she couldn't help remember the times that Lee had tried to talk about his 'other space', his Sea of Flame, and how he'd had to make a body for himself out of Fire, just as The Morrigan had clearly made one out of Growth.
TAYLOR? asked The Morrigan, still loud, but manageable, and she realized the other woman was waiting for an answer.
"I, no. That way should be New Brockton Bay. And we need to find Lee," Taylor said, still able to talk, though she wondered what her face looked like now. "We need to help him."
Because he was wrong about who was behind this.
From everything he'd said, Cauldron were dangerous, but they were so powerful that they just smashed anything that got in their way with overwhelming force. And when your hammer was Alexandria, that usually worked. They didn't match their problems with powers, and especially not Tinkertech, that countered their foes perfectly, because they didn't need to.
It was stupid to do that, months having to deal with New Brockton Bay's issues having taught Taylor that what worked now was almost always better than some 'perfect' solution later. It was better to handle the problem, then move on, anything else wasting precious time.
No, the only reason to do go for the 'perfect' was ego.
And Accord had a lot of ego.
"We need to go. . ." she started to say, but Taylor realized she didn't know how to explain the location of where Lee had gone, especially since she couldn't access the Network to give The Morrigan the details she'd need.
But. . . did she have to?
Focusing on her memories, her idea of location she had through her Tree power, and how it worked with her sense of the Swarm, she tried to pack it all into that second meaning beyond what words would allow, slowly articulating, "We need to go HERE!"
For a long moment, The Morrigan stared at her, saying nothing, and Taylor felt stupid, worried she'd messed it up, that maybe what she was trying wasn't even how any of this worked, having no idea what she was doing, but the woman nodded seriously, saying, the words coming from seemingly everywhere at once, I UNDERSTAND.
Then The Morrigan moved, pulling Taylor along through the Sea of Growth, and, trying to reach out with her own plant-based power she felt the vague shifting of location, passing through thousands of branches, green strands of ivy, and more, until they headed for an enormous flower that grew into being before them, petals folded up around a bulb, and The Morrigan pulled her inside it.
The moment of transition made Tay- no, it was Taylor now, stumble, suddenly in her armor once more, reconnected to the Boston Insect Network, her body flesh and blood again.
And she could feel Lee.
Only. . . at the same time, whatever that was, it wasn't Lee.
And it was Furious.