A/N: Chap 1 review responses are in my forums as normal. I am only able to run 10 forums as a time, so I have deleted my old Last Jedi forum. (For my story, not the god-awful movie). I've also posted an author's note at the end of this chapter. You should read it.
Chapter Two: Winslow Simurgh
Leviathans move upon the deep. She could have covered her eyes and ears, wrapped her head in a thousand blankets and hidden in the deepest hole, and still she would see them.
Larger than planets and yet able to perch on the head of a pin, the leviathans move through the void at speeds beyond imagination. They warp not just space but dimensions and time itself with the ease a man would have walking down the sidewalk. Behind them is only the vast emptiness of intergalactic void, ahead the sparkling hope of energy and life. A spiral galaxy, pristine and untouched.
DESTINATION.
AGREEMENT.
Not words. Not thoughts. Billions of minute nuances of a similar concept, like a single word expressed and understood by a billion different people. The communication rips into her being at wavelengths beyond understanding, stripping away all coherent thought except for what her puny consciousness can translate as two infinitely nuanced words.
They are too impossible to be false—more real than reality itself. All existence seems a lie compared to the horrifying, agonizing truth of the leviathans as they oscillate toward the galaxy. Living beings, but not alive like any sentient being she can imagine. They fold in among themselves, in and out of space as if they are crossing into higher and lower dimensions at will.
If a nebula lived—if a galaxy lived—it would be like these monstrous beings. Devoid of goodness. Devoid of light. Alien beyond measure. There is only hunger and death and an entropic circling toward nothingness. She does not feel awe as before the gates of heaven, but rather terror as before the maw of hell. These luminous beings are not creatures of creation or life; she knows this with every iota of her being.
They enter the galaxy, traversing its vastness with the same speed with which they traverse the void between. In a single gestalt instance, they absorb information from across the entire galaxy. They drink the various electromagnetic spectrums like men lost for days in the desert, and with the energy and light comes information. Worlds beyond human counting they account in a nanosecond. Moons and stars and everything in between.
DESTINATION.
AGREEMENT.
TRAJECTORY.
AGREEMENT.
The course is set. A small world around an unremarkable sun with a species similar to ones they have encountered before. A promise of conflict to restore the lost cycle. To grow strong. They cross the oceans of time and space, planning and preparing as they grow closer.
Abruptly a third entity appears, emerging from a higher plane of existence almost on top of the other two leviathans. This one is smaller, leaner. Starved of energy and yet expending more energy as it moves. It flies toward the two larger creatures.
EXCHANGE.
AGREEMENT.
The newcomer crushes against the two leviathans. The joining is sinuous and beyond imagining in its violence. Pocket dimensions form and collapse with expenditures of energy that could outshine whole suns as they writhe around each other like nebula-sized lovers. They rip each other apart with force to crush moons into dust. The paired leviathans flounder as the newcomer bloats itself on the shards of their being, while sharing few of its own in return.
ATTACK.
REPULSE.
The paired leviathans strike at the third, emitting energies that make a pulsar look dim. The attacker contracts and withdraws only a distance.
PROTECTION.
REJECTION.
All three entities seem almost to bleed. The second of the original pair flounders, writhing in a thousand dimensions at once as it struggles to restore it's lost mass, power and self. It's blood- like shards of neutron stars shower across the many dimensional earths below.
The Third Entity too is bleeding from its encounter, though not as much. It bleeds out energy, but only a single shard of its body falls. It is that lone shard, glistening not with light but with something beyond description, that falls so quickly toward her.
~~Quintessence~~
~~Quintessence~~
Taylor Herbert tried to cover her ears. The roaring in her mind was so loud it didn't just hurt, it burned. She felt her eyes bulge and her skin prickle and her very bones vibrate with the sudden, impossible rush of noise. It was the roar of a football stadium during a game, only a stadium the size of the planet with everyone in it screaming their loudest.
Her own screams were lost in the roar—her pain so insignificant compared to the enormity of the all-encompassing noise—that she could feel her heart and her skin and the whole of her body and soul being burned by the sheer enormity of it. It felt as if her very soul were being flayed apart.
Nor was it sound. Images blasted through her brain in untold numbers—of ships and weapons and sciences she'd never imagined, much less learned. It was too much, too fast.
Something in her mind cracked. It wasn't a physical sound, nor physical sensation. It wasn't a bone breaking or tendon tearing. And yet the jarring, cracking sensation crashed through her mind just like the roaring before did.
Be at peace, Child. You are not alone. The Force is with you, always.
~~Quintessence~~
~~Quintessence~~
Taylor opened her eyes.
She saw a smooth, white metallic ceiling. She was laying down on a hard surface. She tried to turn, but cold metal restraints held her head still. She tried moving her arms, legs or her body, but in doing so felt straps securing her to a table. It felt cushioned, if only thinly. She could feel two points, thin and sharp, hovering so close to the veins in her neck they tickled the fine hairs there. A soreness at those spots made her think of needles.
Taylor, can you hear me? "Taylor, can you hear me?"
She frowned at the odd echo in her head. Yes. "Yes?" Yes.
Rather than answer immediately, she heard her own word echo. She felt fear radiating from her left. As if she were staring at them with her own eyes, she sensed two figures she'd grown up admiring—Miss Militia and Armsmaster.
She always thought Miss Militia was beautiful. She wore modified combat gear—cargo pants and a camouflage shirt. She used red, white and blue scarves as a belt and mask. The air at her hip shimmered with various weapons.
Armsmaster stood silent and resolute, a tall human encased in even more steel-blue armor. He reminded her very much of one of her dad's old movies, Robocop. Only he wore a beard. Between them stood a short, obese woman with a horrid yellow haircut. She felt ill to Taylor, though she couldn't say why.
Need to see if she can stop doing that. "Taylor, I need you to listen to me. When you answered just now, you spoke aloud, but you also spoke to us telepathically. Do you understand?"
Telepathically? She thought about it, about the echo she heard in her head, and the echo she heard in their heads.
Their heads. Oh.
She'd been trying to hear, reaching out to grasp some understanding of where she was. Now, she stopped reaching so hard. "Is this…is this better?'
"Yes, thank you." Miss Milita had a nice voice. It was intensely feminine—soft and rounded over a core of steel. Taylor blushed a little at how womanly the voice was, and the beautiful figure the voice belonged to. She wanted so much to be womanly like that, instead of flat, tall ugly and skinny.
"Taylor, I'm Miss Militia. You're in PRT Headquarters. Do you remember anything about what happened?"
Laughter. Dark. Stench. Cramps and pain and bugs crawling on her and …and…
"I…I was in my locker. It was filled with… It smelled bad. Rot. Sophia hit the back of my head until she got me in, then slammed it shut. They were laughing at me. They wouldn't let me out! None of the other kids helped. None of the teachers. They just left me in and…and…"
"TAYLOR!"
The sound of Miss Militia barking at her brought Taylor out of the nightmare. She was back on the table, with two sharp needles pressed precariously close to either side of her neck. She wished she could turn to see Miss Militia with her eyes, but she couldn't move her head.
"Taylor, I know you're scared and upset. I'm sorry this is happening to you, but I need you to stay calm, do you understand?"
"What's happening?" Taylor asked. "Why am I here?"
"There was an accident at Winslow. People were hurt. We brought you here to keep you safe."
"Why am I strapped down like this? Please, let me go."
"Are we muted? We can't release her yet. Her heart rate is spiking, I recommend we sedate her again. Even with her accelerated metabolism, that would buy us two hours to transport her to the rig."
"Armsmaster, she's terrified. She's alone. She just lost her father. We need to…"
"What about my father? What did you just say about my father? Where's dad?"
"Shit, can she hear us? Militia, did you leave the speakers on?"
"No, the speakers are off. The room's mic was muted, there's no way she can hear us!"
"Unless she's not listening with her ears." A masculine voice, deep and authoritative. If you want to know about your father, Taylor, you need to say his name.
That didn't make any sense at all, but she was so desperate she didn't care. "Danny Hebert. Daniel. He was head of hiring at the Dockworker's Association. We live at 2214 Iris Avenue. Where is he? Militia said I'd lost him. What happened?"
He was in a car accident two days after you were hurt. He was upset and worried about you, and had been drinking. I'm sorry.
"You're lying." Tears burned the corners of her eyes. "You've got to be lying! Dad never drove when he drank! Not since Uncle Peter died. He'd never…never…"
Suddenly Taylor saw. A famous face half-covered in a stars-and-stripes bandana staring at him from the kitchen, gun in hand. Armed men in the living room taking pictures, staring at him. A flash of light and the blaring of a semi's horn. The sound of twisting metal and a terrible, crushing pain.
A last thought: I'm so sorry, Taylor.
Tears streamed down her cheeks as she thought of what the vision meant. Miss Militia was in her house.
"Did you kill him?" she asked. Her voice cracked. "When you went to our house, did you kill him?"
"Taylor…" Guilt. Militia felt guilt. She felt responsible.
A red film bloomed in the center of Taylor's vision as a burning, painful RAGE rushed through her mind. Needles plunged into her neck. She cried out against the cold that washed under her skin, numbing it. Despite the drugs, with her will alone she ripped the syringes from her skin. She heard the mechanical arms groan as she tore them away from the table. With a grunt of concentration, the bindings fell away and she rolled to her feet.
For the first time she saw them with her own eyes—Armsmaster, Miss Militia and the short, fat woman with blonde hair in a horrible bob. All three were staring at her through thick glass.
"Taylor, you need to…" Militia began.
"YOU KILLED MY DAD!"
Her rage seemed to reverberate all around her, feeding back into her mind in a vicious cycle that made the rage even more powerful—even more unbearable. The table ripped up out of the floor with the moan of breaking metal bolts and shot toward the window like a bullet. The window cracked but did not break, so Taylor did it again.
"You killed him, you fucking bitch! You killed my Dad! I hate you! I hate you! You killed my Dad! I'll kill you! I hate you!"
The cold in Taylor's neck spread down her arms and up the base of her skull, making it harder and harder to throw the table. The glass cracked but wouldn't break, so Taylor reached beyond it. With a scream of helpless, lost rage that pressed down around her as well as pushed out from within, she reached out her hand as if she could feel Militia's neck in her fingers, and with all her rage and might squeezed.
The snap of Miss Militia's neck didn't seem like it should have been as loud as it was, but the sound of it, and the woman's folding to the floor like a bag filled with gelatin, brought all sound and motion to a stop. The cold from the injections in her neck stole the strength from Taylor's knees and sent her to the floor.
She heard a deep, anguished male voice scream, "Hannah!" seconds before white foam exploded from the ceiling, and the drugs sent her spiraling back down into the black.
~~Quintessence~~
~~Quintessence~~
"…instantly. She didn't suffer."
Chevalier, head of the Philadelphia Protectorate team, did not respond to Armsmaster's statement. Instead, he simply stood beside the open casket where Miss Militia's body rested in state. He'd never seen her sleep before, not in all the years he knew her. Even during those brief, stolen moments of passion, he'd never seen her simply lay with her eyes closed at peace.
His fingers shook as he took her hand. Her fingers felt stiff, but not cold. Her hand was room temperature.
"And now there are only two left," he whispered.
At the foot of the cedar wood casket, Armsmaster stiffened. "The inaugural Wards team?"
"We were just kids," Chevalier whispered. "Ten of us. Supposedly a safe place to learn how to use our powers. It's not even been twenty years, and only two of us are left."
Chevalier wasn't in his armor. He didn't carry his cannonblade. His power to combine and augment weapons gave him no purchase on how to handle the death of one of his oldest, dearest friends. Even if their romance did not last, their friendship always had.
Nothing gave him the tools he needed to handle the tears that ran down the felt mask he used to protect his identity.
"Where is she? The girl who did this?"
"Under sedation in Level 10 containment," Armsmaster said.
"I want to see her."
Chevalier and Armsmaster had never been close friends, but only because Armsmaster was incapable of being a close friend to anyone. However, in the presence of the body of someone both valued, they found they had something in common.
"This way."
Chevalier was not surprised to see other heroes standing outside the window when he arrived. Miss Militia was not just respected, but personally liked by almost everyone who knew her. Legend, the leader of the New York Protectorate and one third of the Triumvirate which founded and ran the Protectorate as a whole, turned to see him approach with a sad smile.
The elder hero, with his striking blue suit decorated with lighting strikes and a long cape, stepped forward to offer a hand and a hug.
"Chevalier. I'm so sorry. How are you holding up?"
Chevalier returned the hug. Of the original founders of the Inaugural Wards team, Hero had always been his personal patron. But after Hero's death, Legend did his best to fill the gap. Hero had been personable, like a favorite uncle. Legend, though, was fatherly. At that moment, Chevalier appreciated it.
"Good as can be. Mouse, how are you?"
Behind Legend, the only other surviving member of the Inaugural Wards team wiped away a tear and clomped onto him with a strong hug. Just as Mouse Protector used over-the-top theatrics in her cape career, her emotions were just as powerful in private. She clung to him and sobbed.
"I can't believe she's gone!"
The other two heroes, Brockton Bay's own Battery and Dauntless, stood silent. Behind her mask, Battery's eyes looked moist with tears as well. Dauntless, behind his Spartan-inspired helmet, simply looked somber.
Hands were shaken, hugs dispensed, and then Chevalier stood before cracked carbon-sheathed glass to stare at the figure within who killed one of the few people Chevalier believed he still loved.
Even as his eyes took in her slim, almost gaunt figure, his power gave him a different sight.
Chevalier saw powers. They presented themselves as visions, usually of the parahuman's past. Often what he saw were symbols of that cape's trigger event—that day when things went so horribly wrong that they broke, and in the process got power. For him, it was the day his parents died in a car crash, and his brother was kidnapped in the confusion.
For this girl, he knew from the report it was the day three mean girls stuffed her in a locker filled with biological waste. What his vision told him, though, was something completely different. For one thing, her body glowed with intensity. It wasn't a color, or even a light, simply the feeling he had looking at her regarding the intensity of her power itself which his mind interpreted as a glow.
Standing over her was a single, glowing figure. She stood tall and almost inhumanly lithe, with abnormally large eyes a slightly lighter shade of gray than the glowing skin. The figure's head was shaven save for a long braid that hung down one side of her head. She was obviously but inhumanly female, but stood holding what looked like a sword protectively over the figure of the unconscious cape.
"What do you see, Chevy?" Mouse Protector asked. She wiped her tears before placing a comforting hand on his shoulder.
"The girl's a double trigger," Chevalier said. He didn't mention the figure because he didn't know it meant.
Another hand—heavier and stronger—gripped his other shoulder. He turned to see Legend's compassionate, sad smile.
"Rebecca is holding a briefing. Come."
Chevalier fell in behind the Protectorate leader. He said nothing as Mouse Protector took his hand. It had nothing to do with romance, and everything to do with a need for comfort. He gripped it and forced a smile for her sake.
Battery and Dauntless followed behind. The two capes were both younger. Neither had known Militia as anything other than a patron and teacher.
The conference room of the PRT Headquarters in Brockton Bay was utilitarian at best. The chairs looked old, the dark blue fabric faded to the color of an afternoon sky with use. The walls held no portraits of any kind. Blinds obscured the sunlight from outside.
At the end of the table was a large flat-screen monitor that dominated the wall. Just under it, Deputy Director Renick sat at a keyboard, handling the technical aspects of the teleconference.
Director Piggot sat at the end of the table facing the televised face of Chief Director Rebecca Costa-Brown, head of the Parahuman Response Team organization nation-wide. At Legend's direction, Chevalier and Mouse Protector joined him on the right side, their backs to the windows. Armsmaster sat to Piggot's left side, joined by Battery and Dauntless. The rest of the city's capes were on duty or at school, in the case of the devastated Wards team.
"Thank you all for coming during this difficult time," the Chief Director said. Chevalier had never met Costa-Brown in person, but from his many teleconferences had the impression that any emotions she projected were just that: projections. Where Legend's compassion was a real, almost tactile sense, the Chief Director's words simply rang hollow and perfunctory. "Miss Militia was a treasured member of the Protectorate and a good friend to many. She will be missed."
Costa-Brown made a show of lifting a folder and reviewing its contents.
"Armsmaster, in your report on Hebert you gave her a Blaster classification of 7 and Thinker classification of 10+. Can you explain that for the room?"
Chevalier tried to hide his surprise. Like every cape and civilian associated with capes, he knew what the classifications were. Originally designed as a short-hand method to assist the PRT when dealing with capes, they had grown into entrenched labels. Armsmaster, for instance, was a Tinker, able to produce technology centuries beyond what humanity was currently capable of. Legend, with the ability to shoot lasers powerful enough to level cities, was a Blaster. Chevalier himself was classified as a striker because of how he could alter his weapons with touch, and a thinker because of how he could see powers.
A classification of 10 or higher, though, was almost in the realm of Triumvirate or Endbringer levels. It meant only Protectorate members in team strength should even approach the girl.
"The Subject is a free telekinetic without Manton limits, and a telepath."
Telepath.
Of all the powers in the world—from Tinkers who could shatter the walls between dimensions to shakers who could reshape the world itself—telepathy was the one power considered impossible. The only known telepath in existence, in fact, was an Endbringer. And even that was considered as much a shaker effect as anything. For this girl to have a power like the Simurgh was a terrifying thought.
"Explain for everyone, please," the Chief Director said.
Armsmaster nodded. "When the subject regained enough lucidity following her second trigger event to speak, she telepathically projected her words to our minds. She listened to a conversation we had which she could not possibly hear. Later, I communicated directly with her by thought alone—she was able to hear my thoughts as if I spoke them aloud, confirming information I thought but which she could not have otherwise known. This confirms our initial suspicion that the means she incapacitated her entire high school was a telepathic event."
"I sense a 'but' there," the Chief Director said.
"Yes, ma'am. Her power was imperfect. The night before, Miss Militia executed a search warrant of the Hebert home. The subject's father, Daniel Hebert, was intoxicated and upset. While confrontational, he did not impede the search. It was during the search we found the subject's journal, in which she implicated the three victims in her trigger event. Shortly after Miss Militia left, Daniel Hebert ran a red light and was killed in the resulting crash. The subject somehow knew that Miss Militia was the last person to see her father, and blamed her for his death. It was this last which led her to attack Militia personally."
"At which point she telekinetically crushed Miss Militia's neck through a carbon-sheathed tinker glass," Costa-Brown said. She sounded like a lawyer discussing abstract facts, rather than talking about the murder of a strong, valiant woman.
"Correct," Armsmaster said. "After, I might add, she was injected with sufficient tranquilizers to put down a Brute 5. Her body is metabolizing the tranquilizing agent so fast that we are on the clock for keeping her contained. While I am working on something stronger, it won't be finished in time."
"You don't believe the level 10 containment will hold her?"
"No, Chief Director. I believe without the tranquilizer she will be able to escape handily. Even without being fully cognizant, she easily disabled an entire PRT team and came damned close to killing both Battery and Dauntless. She broke my arm even through my armor. If she breaks containment, I don't believe any non-lethal means will contain her."
Being as self-aware as he was, Chevalier found it interesting that the idea of using lethal measures on a teenaged girl did not actually bother him. Not after holding his former lover's hand and feeling it at room temperature.
The Chief Director looked down at the report again, her Latino features schooled in an unreadable mask. Finally, she looked back up and through the screen everyone in the room could feel the intensity of her gaze.
"What happened to Miss Hebert is tragic and inexcusable. She didn't deserve what happened, any more than any other innocent victim deserves what happens to them. If she had come to us, we would have welcomed her with compassion and assistance. Up until a certain point, she was purely a victim. Until, that is, she used her power to murder Miss Militia. After that, she became a villain. Because of her telepathy, and the fact that her power is not Manton limited, she represents an immediate threat to the public that the PRT cannot otherwise contain."
Costa-Brown removed a sheet of paper from her otherwise immaculate desk. "Armsmaster, please coordinate with Dragon for an emergency high-speed air transport to Vancouver. By the time you have her there, the conviction and sentence confining Taylor Hebert to the Baumann Parahuman Containment Center will be approved by the Court."
Costa-Brown skewered Piggot with a hard gaze.
"In the meantime, Director Piggot, I expect every single person who had any role to play in this event to be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. Anyone who received a complaint of bullying yet failed to act on it. Any individual who may have attempted to cover up the severity of it. I don't believe for a moment that this girl triggered as badly as she did because of a mild prank. It's too late to save Miss Hebert or those who died because of her, but we can damn well seek justice for their memories."
Piggot nodded. "We're already coordinating with the local police on the investigation."
"I expect a report on my desk by the end of the week telling me what actions the PRT ENE is taking. Good day." The chief director terminated the call.
Fifteen-year-old Taylor Hebert was about to be sent to the worst prison in the world—a prison that had no exits, with no possibility of parole, that held the worst monsters in the world that they could capture.
The only thing Chevalier could think was: Good.
A/N: The taglines for Worm for Worm includes: The Road to Hell is paved with Good Intentions. Also, "It Gets Worse". Worm is not a nice story. Bad things happen to every single character. It is a story about superheroes that is, oddly enough, devoid of heroes.
Quintessence is a hard story. Not hard to write. I wrote so much what i'm posting is almost a full novel shorter than what I wrote to begin with. No, it's hard in that the world Wildbow created is collapsing in on itself. We only saw a tiny part of it through Taylor's POV in canon, but the implications Wildbow made painted a horrifying world. So, before you got too far into it, I want to reiterate what should be obvious:
1) This story is rated M. It is for adult readers with adult mindsets. It contains scenes of human trafficking and every horrid thing that implies. I will never graphically write such scenes, but there are deeply disturbing implications. Just as were hinted at in the canon material.
2) This is not Broken Chains. Taylor is not Dark!SithLord!Harry-as-a-girl. She's a fifteen-year-old girl on the run from the entire world. This is the story of how Taylor makes a place for herself in a truly screwed up setting.
3) The majority of this story will not take place in Brockton Bay. While some stations of canon are unavoidable, my intent with this fic was to explore other parts of the Worm world. And no, the Birdcage is not one of those settings.
If you are squeamish; if you can't stand for your characters to experience hardship with their victories; if you just hate anything that isn't all sunshine and puppies-this story may not be for you. I loved it. I enjoyed it so much that I overwrote it and had to cut the story by a third. But I have no illusions about it being a happy, fun read.
You've been warned.