I am Thou, Thou art I Chapter 6 (Original chapter Chapter 122)
With Tattletale
"Undersiders, keep her contained so she can be finished off."
Ever since arriving in Brockton Bay and being pressganged into working for Coil, Lisa Wilbourn/Tattletale had tried to get out from underneath his thumb. Unsuccessfully, obviously. Nothing she did surprised him and he seemed to know her powers even better than she did.
Then the girl called Taylor Hebert had popped up on the scene. Tattletale didn't know exactly what it was about her, but something about the new Cape calling herself Joker actually frightened or intimidated Coil, which made the former Sarah Livsey very much intrigued by Joker.
When she had laid eyes on the girl a few minutes previously, her power was strangely…slow. It did work, but it was as if someone had slowed down the speed of its reading by at least half when directed at Joker. Almost as if something was deliberately interfering with her power, in matter of fact.
The sheer breadth of powers that Joker showed was astounding; a number of projections that granted her varying abilities, a basic Brute and Mover package, plus the 'ability to make fake things real' to quote Joker herself after she shot Regent with a bullet when she was wielding a god-damned BB gun!
'A fucking Eidolon-ite. Coil picked a fight with a goddamned mini-Eidolon.' She thought as she tightened the makeshift tourniquet on Regent's shoulder. 'He must really be scared shitless of her. Otherwise he'd be trying to recruit her by force, not trying to trying to kill her like this.'
"We are going to have a talk about this, Tats." Grue growled to her.
"How about when…oh shit! Get down!" Tattletale grabbed Regent and shoved him down as Joker took a shot at the person who had just issued an order to the Undersiders before charging at the rest of the mercenaries on that side, her multi-armed projection looming over her and snarling at the mercenaries.
Moving quickly, Bitch got the three dogs, plus their passengers, down into the warehouse just tin time, as bullets and laser fire from the trigger-happy idiots on the other side.
"This shit is fucked up!" Regent shouted over the gunfire.
"Welcome to my world." Tattletale grumbled. She really hoped she got a chance to talk to Joker properly. Maybe she could do something about Coil…
With Joker
For whatever reason, the idiot mercs were having a hard time hitting me. No clue why, but I would take what I could get. Having bursts of hot lead and beams of high-focused light soaring past my head wasn't a pleasant experience.
"Any ideas, Arachne?" I asked as I charged towards the immobilised mercs on my right.
"As the targets that lie before us are all immobilised, I would suggest an All-Out Attack, Contractor." Arachne suggested before hitting the mercs with another [Magry] attack to keep them still. "When your enemy is frozen, immobilised or stunned, you can unleash all of your power to defeat them. It will not kill humans, but they will be seriously injured."
"Ok, so how do I go about doing that?" I asked as I dodged and weaved, with Arachne skillfully using her [Binding Thread] to form a shield to block some bullets that I couldn't avoid.
"Focus upon thine enemy and unleash your rage. Do not hold anything back; let loose thine unwavering fury and cast your wrath upon the foe." The eight-limbed Persona advised me.
Easy for her to say; I kept my emotions locked down tight because I didn't trust myself with what could be unleashed. With my new powers as a Persona User, I had even less desire to let my temper loose. But…if any group deserved to have my temper let loose on them, it was these murderous mercenaries.
Focusing on my emotions, I glared through my mask at the line of immobile mercenaries…and fully let go of my anger for the first time in years with a shrieking yell of fury.
What happened afterwards was a blur to me, but the next thing I knew, I was standing on the rooftop where the mercs were, surrounded by their prone and insensate bodies, weapons slashed into uselessness, cuts all over their bodies and a blade emerging from my right arm's gauntlet. I was also posing with my left hand's fingers lightly touching my mask as if to remove it and a feral sneer on my face.
"Who's next?" I asked as I glared at the suddenly frozen mercs on the opposite side of my original warehouse.
Back with Tattletale
"Fucking hell." Grue gulped. He and the others had watched Joker just now through the hole in the roof and the windows as she assaulted the mercenaries. It had been a curb-stomp; the mercs hadn't stood a chance.
The black-clad Cape had shifted into what looked like Shadow Stalker's Shadow State, albeit with glowing yellow eyes, and had turned into a blur as she attacked the mercenaries, crisscrossing across the entire group multiple times in an instant before coming to a halt in the center, right arm at her side and revealing a huge fucking blade coming out of her gauntlet and her left arm lightly cradling her mask, with a vicious-looking sneer visible.
"Who's next?" Joker asked coldly, her green eyes boring into the mercenaries.
"We have to get outta here!" Regent whispered harshly. "She could fucking annihilate us with that attack!"
"She can only use it if all of the enemies she is facing are immobilised." Tattle tale said distantly. "I agree with your idea though. This is way over our heads. Not that Coil will let us leave."
As if summoned by her words, her cell phone started to vibrate. Cursing, Tattletale yanked it out and answered it after glaring at it for a moment. "Not a good time, Boss."
"Why are you not attacking?!" Coil demanded down the line.
"Your fucking mercs have turned the place into a warzone!" the blond girl snapped back. "I have a single clip in a pistol and the rest aren't exactly heavy hitters aside from Bitch's dogs. If you wanted us to fight, you should have gotten support of another team, not trigger happy mercs!"
"Do not push me, Tattletale." Her jailer warned her. "I am this close to having you retired from service in a permanent fashion. Either go out there and obey or I'll have my mercenaries come and deal with you presently."
Suddenly, all of the frustration, anger and resentment that she had for the man who had effectively kidnapped her boiled over. Lisa had had it. Enough was enough.
"Fuck. You." She snarled down the phone. "Consider this my resignation, you stupid cowardly sonofabitch!"
With satisfaction, she hung up before throwing her phone on the floor, pulling her Glock out and putting a bullet through where she knew the SIM Card was located.
"I have wanted to do that for months." The Thinker said grimly as she holstered her gun. "And now, I am out of here."
"Tattletale, what the fuck?" Grue asked in exasperated desperation.
"Short story, I was forced to be a villain Cape at gunpoint." The purple clad villainess spat angrily. "I was a civilian! No costume! Don't trust Coil, he'll threaten you with whatever he thinks will work to get you under his thumb. That means your sister. Or Bitch's dogs. Or being exposed to media so someone's father can find him."
Having sufficiently cowed her audience, Tattletale strode towards the door and threw it open before drawing her gun again and shooting the merc coming around the corner in his dominant hand. As he started screaming and clutching his now useless appendage with his remaining hand, she darted out and started running down the street, leaving her former team behind, even as three more mercs started to pursue her.
"Well…" Regent said after a moment. "That was fun. Can we go get a doctor to look at my shoulder now?"
Grue mask-palmed.
With Joker
Seeing a four-man team of mercs split off and start to chase after Tattletale, I had to frown. Judging from what she had said earlier about 9mm lobotomies, it was clear that she at least had been after me under duress. Serious duress at that. If her words were to be trusted, which wasn't necessarily the case, given that she was almost certainly a Thinker.
"Finish them quickly Arachne; we have other things to be getting on with tonight." I told my third Persona.
"I shall move at your command, Joker." The eight-armed woman replied. "Cower and know your place, scum! [Magry]!"
Once the remaining mercs (who hadn't run away for some reason) were crushed by Arachne's gravity power, I once more unleashed my quote 'All Out Attack' end-quote. The scene afterwards was almost exactly the same as the first time, including the question of 'Who's Next?' after posing. Talk about embarrassing.
"I've really gotta get a handle on this power of mine." I muttered as I started to roof-leap in the direction that Tattletale had run, swiftly followed by four mercs, one of whom was wailing like a baby about his ruined hand. Obviously the Thinker was good at shooting, and she was armed. Useful information.
I followed the sound of male shouting, which was surprisingly sparse in Brockton Bay, until I came across Tattletale running down a street being pursued by the remaining three mercs, one of whom was raising a silenced pistol, aiming for the back of the girl's head.
Fuck. No.
"Arachne, is he within range?" I hissed.
"Not yet, Joker." Arachne answered. "Try that lead projectile device you have."
Cursing myself for stupidity, I quickly drew and snapped off a shot at the mercs, which zinged right past them harmlessly and put their guard up. On the bright side, it stopped the one guy from shooting Tattletale. On the bad side, they now had free reign to turn about face and shoot at me. So it was kind of win-some, lose-some situation.
"Go! We'll hold the Cape bitch off!" one merc told the one with the drawn pistol. "You deal with the traitor!"
"On it!" the lone merc shouted and started pursuing Tattletale again.
"Boys, you are really starting to test my patience." I said as I landed five meters in front of them and pointed my pistol at them. "If over thirty mercs couldn't stop me, what on God's green earth makes you think that you two morons have a chance?"
Neither answered except by pointing their rifles at me (both ordinary guns) and charging right at me. I swear, these people…just need to fuck off already!
Extending my arm blade and switching my pistol to my left hand, I counter-charged them with a wordless shout that they could easily translate as 'had fucking enough!'
With Tattletale
Panting desperately, Tattletale squeezed off a couple more rounds in the general direction of the lone set of running footsteps (heavy, armored, male) that continued to pursue her. She doubted that her shots hit, but she couldn't spare the time to turn around and fire. She had to get away!
When a bullet slammed into her left shoulder, the purple-clad Cape barely managed to restrain a scream of agony. Pistol round or not, being shot hurt like a sonofabitch! Pain aside, she barely managed to keep running.
Unfortunately, it did jack shit for the round that slammed into the back of her right thigh, which sent her sprawling to the street with a scream of agony. Barely managing to crawl to the wall, Tattletale looked up blearily through a haze of pain as the last mercenary strode forward slowly, raising his pistol to aim straight at her head.
"Stupid bitch. Shouldn't've tried to go against the boss." He said gruffly.
"Fuck…him…and you…while I'm…at it." She managed to get out.
As her blood started to turn the street red, all she could think about was…the fact that this was it. Seventeen short, painful and thoroughly oppressive years on this world, and she was going to die…just like that. At the orders of a twisted man with all the moral deliberation of choosing what shoes to wear that day. This…twisted mockery of a life and death was her fate?
'…no. No this is not where I will end!' she ground her teeth and glared at the soldier, who actually paused in his advance at the pure hatred in her gaze. 'I will live! I don't care what I have to do in order to achieve it, but I will LIVE!'
Dun-Dun!
"My, my, my…it took an awful long time for you to reach this point." A teasing female voice spoke in her head, as pain filled it and she screamed anew. "But then again, that's fine too. Let the biting bugs eat what they wanna eat, and let the weeds grow where they wanna grow! Some may scoff at them for being foolishness and look down on them, but it is their…no, YOUR, unwavering will that prove that you're alive!"
'Wh-what…what is…this?!' Tattletale…no, Lisa Wilbourn screamed in her mind.
"You, who are not content to live in shackles, hear me now. Do you wish to allow the one who ordered this done to you to simply walk away? Are you a wolf content to eat grass? No, you are not!" the woman's voice declared, and for the life of her, Lisa couldn't read a single thing about her with her power. "People call the will to live 'evil' if it goes against the will of the world. I say that if that is the case, then let evil be our mantra until the day we die! Or are you content to merely allow it to end it here?"
Grinding her teeth, Lisa thought of Coil, sitting smugly in his hidden base, utterly unaffected by her struggles to be free. "No…I…am…NOT!"
"Ah…that is a good sense of determination, girl. Then vow to me now." The woman's teasing tone faded into seriousness. "I am thou, thou art I…thou who would live a life of evil, in spite of the will of the world! I, who have come from the sea of your soul, am the acclaimed, the illustrious Mazhigigika Miludin Do Din Norurun Dou! I, who am known as the Whimsical Storytelling Sorceress, shall strike down those who would act for 'good' in stealing your life!"
An explosion of wind emanated from Lisa's prone body, throwing the merc back and disarming him. Blinking, the dirty-blond girl realised that she had a mask covering her face. Reaching up with one hand, she tried to pull it off, but it was stuck tight. Forcing her left arm to join her right, she pulled with all of her might, just as Joker ran around the corner.
With Joker
I cursed as I ran. Taking care of those two idiots from earlier had taken way too long; they had gotten in close and used their bayonets and knives to very good effect once I scrapped their guns. I had switched back to Velvet for her resistance to close combat attacks and had taken care of them pretty easily after that.
As I ran, I felt a sense of pressure on my mind, one that I did not recognise.
"A Persona User is Awakening, Joker." Velvet said quietly.
"What?! But…who?!" I exclaimed before skidding around a corner and spotting someone I had to take a second look at clutching a mask covering her face. "…Tattletale? You ARE shitting me."
The mask the former(?) Undersider wore was a half-face mask like my own, but with a definite stylistic difference. Mine was what someone would call edgy and serious; Tattletale's was shaped like a larger version of a domino mask, but with the corner's on either side of the top part extended like horns a good four inches or so long. It was harlequin-patterned, with the colours alternating between lilac and dark blue, while the same star-iris decorated eye glowed crimson in the exact same location as mine. It looked like a mask someone would wear to a Venetian masquerade.
With a scream of agony, Tattletale tore the mask off of her face, spraying blood all over the place and making both the merc who was sitting on his ass and me recoil in horror. Good god…was that how I had looked when I Awoke?!
The mask vanished from her hand and the injuries on her face vanished. In fact, the two bullet wounds I could see on her shoulder and leg vanished as well, allowing her to stagger to her feet as lilac and dark blue flames arose around her. Her mask reappeared on her face as the flames moved over her costume, replacing it. She now wore a dark blue, pink and lilac tube top that exposed a lot of her cleavage (which, modest as it was, still provided her with more curves than me, dammit), a pink 'tail' that fluttered in a breeze that didn't exist, sleeves tied at the upper arm to keep them on, pink panties with a 'skirt' made up of four or so books, a pair of tights, one dark blue and one pink, and a pair of mostly pink flats. Her right hand was raised and held palm up. Floating inside it was a white paper man.
Then her Persona made its appearance. Rising up from her host, the Persona was dressed almost exactly as her host was. She was had long platinum hair, a sarcastic, sardonic smirk on her face and sharp, bright green eyes. Atop her head was a ridiculous-looking hat with a starred brim and two peaks on her hat that made it resemble that of a jester's headwear.
"I am Magilou Mayvin, the Whimsical Storytelling Sorceress!" the woman declared. "To those who would rob my contractor of her life, you would do well to stand back!"
"Magilou!" Velvet appeared above me, looking more emotional and stunned than I remember her ever being.
"Velvet..! Is…is that you?!" 'Magilou' asked, looking just as surprised for just a moment before her smirk snapped back in place. "Heh…so we're both teaming up again, by the looks of things. Do a girl a favour and help my contractor out?"
"What say you, Joker?" the Lord of Calamity asked me. I sighed and restrained the impulse to pinch the bridge of my nose in frustration. I needed to find out what the hell is going on, so the best plan probably is to help Tattletale…or whatever she's going to go by now.
"Fine. Let's take care of the idiot trying to pull his pistol out of the wall it's embedded in and then head back to the hideout." I said with a sigh. "I want answers though, Velvet."
"Join the club." Tattletale answered, shifting uncomfortably in her new outfit, which was quite a bit more exposed than her old one.
"Answers you shall receive." Velvet assured us both. "Magilou, please fight seriously."
"Now, now, Velvet, you know I'm always serious…about slacking off." The Sorceress smirked.
I rolled my eyes. This one was going to be a handful, I could tell.
"Now contractor…unleash your fury upon your enemy to let me fight." Magilou told Tattletale.
"Oh, that is way too easy." The Cape/Persona User said grimly and focused for a moment.
"Time for you to cool off. [Bufu]!" The Persona smirked and clicked her fingers at the now frantically retreating merc. In seconds, he was frozen inside a block of ice for an instant before it shattered, sending him to the ground, trembling at the sudden shift into freezing temperatures.
"And that's all she wrote. How dull." Magilou put her hands behind her head and continued to smirk in a superior fashion.
"Can one of you…people…please tell me what the hell is going on here?" Tattletale asked with what was clearly exaggerated patience.
"First up…you still with Coil?" I asked seriously.
"NO! He just tried to have me executed!" the new Persona User recoiled.
"Good. So, if you want the story, follow me and I'll fill you in on what's going on and what powers you now have." I said with a smirk. "As a freebie, you are now strong and athletic enough to do this."
I leapfrogged up between the alley's two buildings and made it to the roof easily. A minute or so later, Tattletale followed suit, with a very-much stunned expression on her face.
"Holy shit…!" she muttered.
"Yeah, that was my reaction too." I chuckled. "C'mon. Sounds like the police and PRT will be here soon. My hideout's this way."
Nodding, Tattletale fell in step behind me. As she did so, I heard a voice whispering in my ear.
I am Thou, Thou art I…
Thou hast acquired a new vow.
It shall become the wings of rebellion
That breaketh thy chains of captivity.
With the birth of the Priestess Persona within thee,
Thou hast attained the winds of blessing that
Shall lead to new freedom and power…
…looks as if Igor's going to be looking smug at me tonight.
So this is where I'll end the Joker!Taylor story…for now. Did you like Tats having Magilou? Poor Velvet; looks as if she can't get away from her, even in another world.
Next up…probably Dragon Heart.