Entanglement
Part Four: Learning About the World(s)
[A/N 1: This chapter commissioned by Fizzfaldt and beta-read by Lady Columbine of Mystal.]
[A/N 2: In case anyone is wondering, this fic is built around short, sharp chapters, between 3K and 4K words.]
Earth Bet
Taylor (Terra)
I was getting used to this, but I didn't know if that was a good thing or a bad thing. Just for instance, when I saw that I was back in the hospital room, I knew exactly which world it was. Once I got out of here, that would probably change. I made a mental note to put together a list of landmarks to discreetly check for if I wasn't sure. It already sucked to be stuck in a hospital room because I'd had no idea what was going on inside my head, with my powers.
Paper crinkled inside my pyjama top and I fished for it, anxious to see the answers OT (well, I couldn't keep referring to her as 'other-Taylor' all the time) had for me. I'd pushed the limit with answering her questions; it was good that I could type as fast as I could. As it was, I was pretty sure I'd fallen 'asleep' at the laptop.
I briefly wondered what that looked like from the outside. Did whichever body I was in blink or shudder or even fall over while we were handing off custody? I'd have to find my camera and record myself, to see what it looked like. OT was probably curious about that too. Because duh, she was basically me.
"Okay …" I mused, unfolding the paper. OT's scrawl was just as messy as mine. If someone not in the know read this, they'd probably think I was writing the questions and answers to myself as a quiz kind of thing.
What is that thing in the bay?
That's the base for the local Protectorate team. Government superheroes. The ones Brockton Bay have are Armsmaster, Miss Militia, Assault, Battery, Velocity. Look it up on PHO.
Did you know we can control bugs?
I do now. Holy shit. That's amazing. I just thought we could see through their eyes and stuff.
Are superheroes and supervillains a thing here?
Yes, and definitely yes. There are two three supervillain gangs in BB right now. Empire 88, Azn Bad Boyz, Merchants (sorta)
Should I let people know I can control bugs?
Fuck no! DO NOT DO THAT
Is swapping us between worlds your power?
No.
(If it is, please stop).
I honestly have no idea how that's happening
How did you get us out of the hospital?
Smiled and agreed with everything your-dad said.
Do you have a journal too?
Yes, definitely. Closet, top shelf, under the tacky Xmas sweater from Gram.
Is there anything I need to know about before I go home?
Lots n lots. Dad's not with Kaiden. (No idea who she is, or Theo, or the rug rat). Just me and him. Our house is in same place, but shittier than yours. Winslow principal is called Blackwell, not Aunt Zoe. You're gonna hate my computer. My password is Dad's birthday, but with month and year swapped. First superhero was Scion, golden man. PHO is Parahumans Online, I've got a tab on my compu
The words trailed off. I knew exactly what that meant; she'd been too sleepy to write any more, and she'd shoved the paper down her top before she passed out altogether. But the information she'd given me was invaluable. I read through it again and again.
Okay, so superheroes were a thing, and the government had dedicated heroes in some sort of nationwide team (unless the whole thing was based in Brockton Bay, which I honestly couldn't see) called the Protectorate. It was actually a pretty cool name for a superhero team, I had to admit.
Also, you didn't just admit to having powers. I was guessing masks were definitely a thing. I began scribbling more questions as I thought things through. Did people just accept masks as given, or did they try to figure out who was behind them anyway? If I ever decided to go out as a hero, could I assume that nobody would recognise me without my glasses, or would I need something more substantial? Would a domino mask do the job, or was a half-face or full-face affair more desirable? How did super-battles work anyway, if masks were likely to obscure the vision?
OT said swapping wasn't her power. So either someone was messing with both of us, or maybe it was a power we shared now, over and above the bug control? I didn't know how powers worked. Maybe if I could find an expert in the field? How long had powers been around, anyway? (I scribbled that question down). Couldn't have been World War 2 or before, or the world would be totally different, every comic book ever to the contrary.
Secret to getting out of the hospital: don't appear crazy. Got it. Smile and wave, boys. Smile and wave. I could do that, definitely.
Journal. Journal was good. I would need to read that thing cover to horrific cover, and then show it to this Blackwell person. Hopefully she wouldn't have the same protective-Mom mode that Aunt Zoe had been stuck in ever since Emma and her dad got mugged a few years ago.
Finding out that Dad and Kayden weren't a thing in this world was a surprise, but not a huge one. Divergences were a thing, after all. Like, well, super-powers. I wondered what she and Theo and Aster were doing in this world. And if Max Anders was still going down for RICO and funding domestic terrorism.
Password, check. (I'd totally forgotten about giving her mine. It was nearly the same anyway, but I jotted it down just in case).
Okay, so Scion was a well-known hero? I was just memorising the name Parahumans Online (which I suspected was what OT meant by the 'PHO' reference earlier) when the door opened. Hastily, I tore the page off the pad and closed my hand around it.
A nurse came in, followed by other-Dad. "Hi, Taylor," he said with a cautious smile. "How are you feeling?"
"Better," I said honestly. "Lots better. I'm still probably gonna be showering about three times a day, but at least I can see straight." I sat up in bed and swung my legs over the side. "Can I go home now? Please?" I knew it wasn't home-home, but it beat the living daylights out of being in the hospital.
Other-Dad (okay, OD) smiled; it was like the sun had come up. "Let's see what we can do about that."
Smile and wave, boys, I reminded myself. Smile and wave.
Earth Terra
Taylor (Bet)
When I woke up next, I was sitting at other-me's desk, with her laptop shoved back so I could pillow my head on my arms. Which reminded me; I'd have to come up with a nickname that was easier to say. Maybe OM? I'd go with that, for the time being.
Getting up, I stretched mightily, feeling my back pop into place again. I still couldn't get over how fancy her room looked compared to mine, or how there wasn't any superhero stuff on the wall. I wondered how OM would react to the fact that I'd once owned a pair of Armsmaster-branded panties. Knowing me, she'd probably laugh her head off.
I sat down at the desk again and dragged the laptop back toward me. It was still awake, which meant I hadn't been out for long. I wondered if I could buy a cheap camera from somewhere and record the changeover, just to see what it looked like. Actually, considering all the cool stuff OM had, she probably got a lot more allowance than I did; I could probably afford a decent camera instead.
Anyway, that was a plan for later. Right now, I wanted to see if OM had found the list of questions.
She had indeed, and she'd answered them too. Theo was Kayden's stepson (not 'Kaiden', like I'd thought it was spelled), not her biological son, but Aster (cute name) was hers. Kayden's ex was one Max Anders, which meant holy shit, either this is a really weird divergence, or my world's Max Anders is a criminal too. That was just too bizarre for words. Other me's Dad had already told me he was going down for RICO, which I seemed to recall meant criminal racketeering and stuff like that.
I'd never met the man personally—Dad was an important person in the Dockworkers, but not that important—so all I knew of him was from what I'd seen on TV. Handsome, smiling, presiding over fundraisers and charity dinners, he was one of Brockton Bay's most influential businessmen.
Was it even possible he was a criminal in Earth Bet? That was something I'd have to look into … well, we'd have to look into.
I scrolled farther down the answers. Emma, Sophia and Madison were definitely the prime suspects for shoving me into the locker. Some things, it seemed, never changed. But here, Emma's mom was principal of Winslow. I had to say, I'd be really interested in how that happened. Apparently, Aunt Zoe had been hyper-protective of Emma ever since she (Emma) and Mr Barnes were mugged a few years ago. In her eyes, Emma could do no wrong.
On that note, OM's journal was exactly where I'd left mine, except her closet was a hell of a lot bigger. She'd even hidden it under the exact same butt-ugly Christmas sweater Gram had given me, the one with Rudolph showing a love heart for a nose. Some things really didn't ever change.
I reminded myself to familiarise myself with it before Agent Wallis came to talk to me about it. It wouldn't do to not be able to quote chapter and verse on stuff that had supposedly happened to me. (Well, it had, but me me.) It was still bizarre that the FBI, no less, were interested in the locker thing. It was almost like the authorities were actually interested in solving crimes.
She hadn't been able to go into much detail about nine-eleven and the Patriot Act (from the look of her typing, she'd been trying hard to answer all my questions before she dropped off again, and she'd just about managed it) but she did tell me to Google it. Which was another point of congruence, that they had Google here. I went through the rest of the questions, gradually building a picture of the world that was both weird and familiar at the same time.
Sitting back in the chair, I stared at the ceiling while I tried to assimilate it all. America had been involved in several wars since the date that Scion would've arrived. There were two separate wars in Iraq, and one in Afghanistan. One of those wars, if I was understanding things correctly, was somehow connected to nine-eleven and the Patriot Act.
But still, no Endbringers or supervillains, just ordinary people being assholes to each other. And they still had Kyushu and Newfoundland, so that was a plus.
I closed my eyes and shook my head. Capes had been a huge part of culture since Scion's debut. They'd stamped their mark right across society; I'd been aware of it for my entire life. If they'd ever been here and just vanished one day, the effects would still be plain to see. But they'd never been, and I was still having trouble fitting my head around that.
Dad knocked on my bedroom door. "Taylor? Are you awake?"
Given that I was not only awake but sitting at OM's laptop, there was only one answer I could give. "Sure, Dad. What's up?"
"Agent Wallis called. He had some things to deal with, but he'll be over in an hour to talk to you about what happened at Winslow. Are you ready to talk to him?"
I grabbed up the journal. Time to see how much I could absorb in half an hour. "I will be."
Earth Bet
Taylor (Terra)
Riding in the car across this alternate Brockton Bay was both scary and disorienting. The city honestly looked almost as though it was under siege or something. Crumbling infrastructure, crappy roads after we got five minutes north of Brockton General, weird damage that looked like claw marks on the sides of buildings … I wanted to hug other-Taylor. Just growing up in this place would've been depressing as crap.
And then I saw a bunch of flying people up in the sky, and my incipient bad mood just evaporated. They looked amazing, exactly what I would've expected to see in a summer blockbuster style movie … except this was real. One of them was even generating a force field to carry some of their teammates along. "Holy shit," I whispered, forgetting that I was supposed to be used to this sort of thing. "Did you see that?"
"Yeah," said other-Dad, peering up at them through the windshield. "Don't often see New Wave's whole roster out and about at the same time. They're definitely going somewhere in a hurry. Wonder what's happening?"
New Wave. I stored that name away to check out at my first convenience, and dredged up the names OT had given me. "Maybe they're going to fight the, uh, Asian Bad Boyz, or Empire Eighty-Eight?"
Fortunately, my total lack of familiarity with the names didn't register with him at all. "Probably not the Empire," he mused, gesturing at a red and green slash of colour on one of the buildings we were driving past. "We're in ABB turf now. Sounds like Kaiser might be trying to take some territory, and Lung's objecting."
The fact that he was referring to what had to be supervillains with such casual familiarity was beyond surreal. I peered around nervously, wondering what the villains looked like if the heroes looked so cool. "Isn't this, you know, kinda … dangerous?" Being out and about while supervillains were duking it out on the streets, I meant.
He paused for a moment, and looked at me, his eyes widening slightly. Shit, I thought. He's figured it out.
"Jeez, Taylor, I'm sorry." He shook his head with a grimace. "The doctor said not to let you get worked up. It's okay, we'll be home soon, and you can have a nap in the peace and quiet."
I breathed deeply, still looking around for any signs of supervillains battling it out, with or without heroes involved. Luckily for my rattled state of mind, I didn't see anything or anyone to fit that description. What sort of a world have I been dropped into?
When we pulled into the driveway, I immediately saw what OT meant about the house. It was the same house on the same lot, but it wasn't the house that I'd grown up in. Along with the rest of Brockton Bay, it looked dingier than my home, and the flower garden had weeds in it. Didn't OT or her dad even have the time to attend to that?
I got out of the car and stood looking up at the house until other-Dad climbed out of the driver's seat and locked the doors. Carrying the bag containing toiletries and pyjamas that he'd brought to the hospital, I followed him around to the back door, where the same fake rock still probably hid the same spare key. Cognitive dissonance was rattling my cage even more now, the achingly familiar interspersed with the weirdly unfamiliar.
He unlocked the door and entered, and I followed. Inside, the house was … drab. Even when he switched on the light, it felt smaller than my house, more cramped. Our house is in same place, but shittier than yours. Yeah, got that. Was it just me, or were the walls thicker, reducing internal space? Why would that even be a thing?
"I'll … I'll just go have a shower and change," I ventured. "Maybe catch a nap." God, I hoped OT's bedroom was in the same place. Surely she would've said something if it wasn't.
"Yeah, probably a good idea." OD was peering at me, and I tried not to flinch away. Even if this wasn't my Dad, he was still OT's father, and he cared. "Taylor, we've got to talk about what happened at Winslow, sometime. You know that, right?"
I nodded jerkily. "Totally." Wondering how OT was going with this same conversation with Dad, I went along the entrance hall, then up the stairs.
Just stepping into 'my' room in search of clothing was a dismaying affair. My closet was about half the size of the one I was used to, and most of my stuff just wasn't there. An ancient-looking desktop rig made me realise exactly what OT had meant by how I'd hate her computer.
I spent a few moments admiring a large wall poster portraying the Protectorate that other-Taylor had mentioned, posing like they were about to fly off and save the world from some unimaginable evil. As cool as that other team had been … High Wave? New Wave? Whoever; these guys looked even better. The trouble was, they weren't named, so I had no idea who was who.
Tucking the crumpled-up notes under the computer mouse, I rummaged for clothing. Very quickly, I found that what I'd reserved for Winslow-only wear was all OT had.
Welp, I can only work with what I've got.
Grabbing something that didn't look too grungy, I headed along to the bathroom. The hot water was nice, though I didn't recall the pipes rattling quite so much. Showered and dried, I got dressed in the clean clothing and went back to 'my' room.
All I wanted to do was collapse face-first and sleep until I woke up in my own bed, but I had more urgent priorities. Pulling out the computer chair, I sat and faced the outdated monstrosity in front of me. With a little bit of searching, I located the power switch, and turned it on.
And waited.
Eventually, it decided to boot all the way up, but in the process making it absolutely clear that it was not in favour of this. I didn't care. The universe wasn't catering to my wishes, so the computer didn't get a say in the matter.
OT's password got me into the system, then I actually had to log on to an internet server to get online, which made me frown. What year was this again? Twenty eleven, or two thousand one?
Well, if I was going to get online, this was what I had to do. I clicked the icon, and heard a noise that I hadn't expected to hear ever again in my life; the sound of a dial-up modem doing its handshake with the server at the other end of the line. I revised my estimate of the effective year back to nineteen ninety-one.
"Holy fuck," I muttered. "And here I thought superheroes would make things better. Where are the flying cars and light-speed laptops?"
Not in this household, that was for sure. I could only imagine that the superheroes were keeping all the good stuff for themselves.
Finally, it logged on, and I found the tab OT had mentioned. There was so much I didn't know about superhero culture, and I didn't want to get caught on the back foot by assuming anything. Clicking on it, I found myself entering the ParaHumans Online website.
Roaming through the threads, I began to read the ones that sounded interesting. It all seemed fun and games, until I happened on the one marked S-Class Threats.
That was when my eyes started getting wider and wider. There were images of things called Endbringers, and collated statistics of their depredations worldwide. (I'd thought Brockton Bay was in bad shape. No. Just … no.) Pictures and articles about the Slaughterhouse Nine, Butcher and the Teeth, Nilbog, and others.
Silly me, I'd thought the local villains were the biggest threat I'd have to worry about.
Stop the world. I'd like to get off, please.
End of Part Four
