I keep having all these crossover ideas for Worm, I realize that they're not that original at the end of the day, the whole Alternative!Power Taylor isn't something that nobody ever thinks about. Nevertheless, I'm going to make use of it, because I want to, and nobody can stop me.
I'm publishing this in the same way and for the same reasons I've published both Edoc'sil and Undead Knight: more to take the thought out of my mind than with an actual wish for completing this story. On my list of priorities, the Worm-crossover are almost at the bottom. Even so, if the single chapter manages to get enough exposure, I MAY eventually write a whole story out of it.
Anyway, I've read 'With Grace and Elegance' which apparently has been abandoned. And it's a fucking cool piece of fiction, no doubt. However, even for the standards of OP!Skitter, that particular fic is exaggerated. I still loved it, and the only conflict is the moral ones within the main character.
If you've read my other works, maybe you stumbled upon 'Yamamoto's infinity war', in which the old fucker from Bleach trips into the marvelverse. Knowledge of Bleach isn't necessary to enjoy this fic, and now that I think about it, neither is knowledge of Worm, however, you might be extremely confused if you know nothing of both.
So yes, this is yet another AlternativePower!Taylor that I'm adding to my ever-increasing list.
(I obviously onw nothing)
Kindled
My arms and hands hurt as I kept slamming them against the door of my locker as I gritted my teeth and kept my eyes scrunched close, doing my level best to keep my mouth shut to avoid the creepy crawlies from getting in, my shoulders hunched as best as I could to try and shield my ears from the bugs that occasionally buzzed.
In the dark and filth of the metal coffin I had been forced into, while I did my best to ignore the laughter outside, everything just was... too much.
The stench made me gag once more, but I forced myself to ignore and swallow the bile with what little was left of my awareness. In the dark, I was alone.
Not that it would change if I was outside.
Emma.
Mum's death.
Dad's absence.
Mum's flute.
Everything... I felt like my years in Winslow came crashing over my shoulders at the same time. Nobody cared, and truly, even I... didn't.
I could see them laughing even with my eyes closed, chatting happily about my ruined life, about yet another attack on me... I hate them. The thought was hardly a new one, and not one that could either help me or provide a channel for my justified rage. And more than that, I realized, hate was too little a word.
Why would anybody dedicate their life to tearing down someone else? What kind of prize did the pain of others bring? I hated them, and it was pointless.
For all the things that I had been taught, for all of my hopes and dreams which grew dimmer and dimmer with each passing day since the Betrayal of Emma... I might as well just die, for all that I mattered to the world.
But... I didn't want to. I slammed my fists harder against the locker, feeling my skin split against the metal, and my teeth were bared in the dark in a violent snarl. They didn't deserve to kill me. They didn't deserve victory.
In the locker, drowning in my rage, wishing nothing more that the monsters outside could pay tenfold for everything they ever did, I broke.
In the vast expanse of nothingness, in the void between stars, and in the echo between dimensions, two titanic, crystalline forms twisted meaninglessly, following a pattern they had established in the count of long millennia. Each was stretched beyond measures understandable by the human mind, their shadows falling upon everything, and their fractal existence defying definition of any kind.
[Trajectory]
[Destination]
[Proposal]
[Agreement]
As the attention of the impossible existence shaped the perception of the observer, the two Worms moving by the inertia of a decision taken unknowingly before the beginning of measured time, One of the Two turned towards Taylor, a Shard breaking apart from the Whole and...
A burning comet of bright, white, and red flame, tore through the dark expanse of the universe. It shone impossibly with a brilliance capable of shattering suns, dispersing the shadows projected by the Worms and searing the surface of the two beings, unequipped as they were to deal with the unrestrained sea of flame that crossed the echo between dimensions as a bullet through paper.
Suddenly, the world felt dimmer to my senses, and I could only feel it. Mounting, Rising, Roaring... A fury not mine that nevertheless belonged to me.
Hunger and scorching, unrestrained rage. Like a sea of fire.
I felt like blinking and falling at the same time, and an instant later, I could see.
Under a dark sky, blotted by ashen clouds, Brockton Bay quaked.
I was standing on a pier that stretched over the sea, but my eyes could nevertheless see the whole city. It was... strange. Far inland, I could see my home, with its broken step and cracks, the small backyard and my own room, grey and meaningless.
To the far left, I immediately recognized Emma's house, its walls clean and windows clear, shining with a light that I no longer wished to see.
Not a second after that thought left me, a rolling wave of fire crossed the distance, devouring, crackling, and hungry.
The angry red flame engulfed Emma's house in the same time it took me to blink, and I was almost detached as whatever regret, whatever hope, whatever Anything I had ever felt for the Barnes Family disappear, devoured by the flames, which roared brighter and taller, their fury growing with mine. "It is not enough."
I turned my head right, my eyes slowing down to take in a place where I had once walked with Mum on the Broadwalk, we had eaten ice cream together and...
My eyes stilled on the Union's building, where Dad worked. I could see his silhouette in a window that I knew was his office, and I felt once more the gaping hole of his absence in my life, and, I could finally admit it, I hated him. Because he didn't protect me at school, because he was gone along with mum but without the excuse of being dead.
With another thought, a rolling wave of fire set alight the Dockworkers' building. Growing taller still, the crackling of the flames and the whooshing of air that was being devoured seemed to laugh cruelly while singing their victory.
Again, my eyes moved, this time without lingering, and settled on my personal slice of Hell. Winslow was surrounded by shade and cruel laughter. "We'll see who will laugh at last."
A white roar of flame later, the school too was set alight. But unlike the previous two buildings that I had targeted, where only scorched earth was left, the building kept burning. The flames echoing my own rage. Where I wanted nothing more to do with either Dad or the Barnes, I wanted for the fire to slowly pay back everything that had been done to me by the Trio.
I blinked, and for the first time, I turned my attention to the sea. To the Ocean. To the neverending expanse of waves... but there was no water there, only fire. Rolling and thundering against the shore of the Bay, slowly burning a bit more with each wave,
"Will you burn everything?"
Why shouldn't I? The Trio would get what they deserved, that was for sure, but nobody ever helped me. Nobody ever extended a hand, nobody walked forth to stop them, or to help me when they chunked me inside my locker. Why shouldn't they pay too? Where was Dad when everything kept being pushed on me? Where were the heroes? The Police? The adults? Where were those responsible for my well-being?
I blinked in the strange replica of Brockton Bay, only now realizing that there was a person whose that voice belonged to.
The man I turned to was just an inch shorter than me, bald, with a horrifying X-shaped scar on one side of his head, lacking an arm, and ancient. Bushy white eyebrows that coupled with his beard and mustache reminded me of Pai Mei from Kill Bill more than anything else, and for an instant, I almost laughed, and with that moment of uncertainty, my all-consuming rage was disturbed, and I frowned.
"Who're you?" I asked, and this time, as I spoke I felt my lips crack and burn, for the first time forcing me to pay attention to myself.
"Place your hands into the sea." the old man answered, and with shock, I realized that the flames had climbed, and now burned less than a handspan from the surface of the pier.
"What?" I eyed mistrustfully the ocean of flames, that now surrounded the pier completely.
"Will you wield the flames of your rage? Or will they consume you? You've already lost much to the fire and your own foolishness."
My eyes turned to the flames, that seemed to be spinning in a wide cyclone around the two of us. But where I was starting to feel the heat, and the pain that it brought, the old man seemed unruffled.
Instinctively, I understood what he was asking, and I distractedly considered what to do. I was burning up, I could tell, but the satisfaction of letting go, of just burning all the things that had hurt me...
"If I let the fire go, will I die?" But as I asked, I already knew the answer. I wanted to burn everything, my rage demanded nothing less, and yet... Dying meant losing. Worse, it meant that Hess and the others would win.
And that, more than anything, could not be allowed: I took a deep breath, and plunged my hands into the fire, feeling it, breathing it, knowing it. I knew the flames, I understood their hunger because it was my own, and the need to consume and the joy of conquest.
An instant later, my hands clenched around something solid, and with a heave, I pulled. Slowly, constantly, my back hurting and screaming in protest, I lifted the hilt of what I could tell was a sword.
"What will you burn? What will you spare?" The old man that had talked me out of my burning spree spoke when I freed the katana from the sea of fire, "Only you can answer."
As the tip of the blade left the rolling waves of flame, the sea seemed to recede, the cracked and cooked shore was left bare to the ashen clouds over our heads, the buildings that I had burned remained gone, and Winslow remained alight, because I wanted those to keep burning.
"I'll ask again." I spoke, but there was no longer pain and hate to crack open my lips: "Who are you?"
The ancient-looking man seemed to open his eyes for the first time, I could spy in his grey irises the same hate and rage that I could see rolling in the sea that washed the shore of this strange version of Brockton Bay.
He looked at me, and answered.
AN
For those that are unfamiliar with the character that I'm writing this fiction for (you fucking casuals, you), imagine that your afterlife is an endless purgatory in which powerful souls gain superpowers, mainly in the form of magical swords.
Yamamoto is a Bleach character that was so powerful and charismatic, that he managed to rally others of his own calibre and conquered the fucking Afterlife (but mostly because he killed everyone that got in his way). Once he was done, he sent his 'team', his companions, his equals, to defend 'God', while he remained behind. And for a thousand years, he turned the endless expanse of the Afterlife's anarchy into an actual government.
He remained the head of the 'Military' but relinquished all the other powers to a Ruling Body.
And he remained General Commander (head of the Military), only because in more than a thousand years, nobody was ever born with the potential to surpass him.
This (I don't think the author did it consciously) indicates a pretty hardcore set of beliefs, two very big steely balls, and a general veneer of awesomeness that has nothing to do with the Japanese-Mangaka obsession of making old, wrinkled men unreasonably powerful.
So, I've tried to adapt that particular piece of his character in the first use of the blade in Taylor's hand. For those unaware, the flaming sword is actually the manifestation of Yamamoto's character. So: brutal, but not mindless. Open to the extermination of the enemies, but always in control.
Burning down the Brockton Bay would have meant soul-suicide, if we want to be pedantic with the Bleach Lore.
So, let me know your opinions here. Shinigami aren't exactly known for non-lethal take-downs, so you can expect a lot of conflicts very soon.
