A/N: Chap 35 review responses are in my forums as normal. And because Irony spares no one, after my noting how one author was "inspired" by my Nutcracker at Winslow scene, a reader pointed out that another author had already used the name "Insight" for Tattletale. It's not an author I've read, but they used the idea first. So there you have it! Irony, I am thy bitch.
In more sobering news, I hope everyone is well and safe.
Chapter Thirty-Six: Hangovers
It was after six before Seneca released the two young women from their intake interviews. The next day was going to be a wash of PR and classes, meeting the rest of the Wards, as well the first class of an accelerated driver's licensing program for Taylor. And that was on top of having a social worker come inspect their home.
Which meant Taylor had a choice of requesting a PRT transport back to the other side of the city, or accepting a ride from her newest teammate. "You're only a few months older than I am, are you sure you can drive with me in the car?"
Sarah just grinned and motioned for Taylor to follow. She led Taylor out the same back door they entered. The rain let up, but the clouds still hung low and heavy over the city, given an infernal orange glow from the city lights. They passed through three security checkpoints before they reached the parking lot.
She drove a cherry red convertible. A very expensive cherry red convertible.
"How much are they paying you?" Taylor demanded.
"Get in," Sarah said instead of answering.
The interior was real leather, lovingly oiled to a nice sheen. The car came to life with a confident, powerful purr. Comparing Sarah's car to her old sedan was like comparing a tiger to a kitten. Sarah pulled out of her parking space carefully, her eyes everywhere, until they were free of the mundane and tinkertech security checkpoints and on the street.
"So are you going to tell me why you're really here?" Taylor said. "Because they don't pay Wards enough to buy cars like this, and there's no way in hell you'd go from Brockton Bay to Seattle on your own."
Sarah laughed; it was a happy, almost frantic sound.
"Fuck no, they don't pay enough for this! This was a parting gift from Coil. While you were having fun with all his men, Dinah called the PRT and I fucking robbed the son of a bitch blind. And then I convinced Alexandria to let me keep it."
"And how did you do that?"
"By promising to use it for good," Sarah said. "You hungry? Nutcracker told me about this great seafood place on Portage Bay."
The restaurant looked run-down from the outside—old, weathered wood in need of a new paint job. Inside, though, the smell washed away any concern Taylor had. It could almost have been Josie's back home. She then became aware of the attention they were getting.
Sarah wore her mask still, though her costume consisted of cargo pants and a heavy, blue wool sweater. Taylor was still in her dress from that morning.
The waitress approached the two cautiously, until a loud voice boomed, "Over here!"
Taylor looked across the room at the figure standing in the doorway to what looked like a private room. He wore a casual PRT uniform of light gray long-sleeve button up and black fatigues. His PRT badge dominated the right breast of his shirt.
"We're with them, thanks," Sarah said to the hostess with smile.
The two young capes wove their way through tightly spaced tables filled with mouth-watering food and crowds of fascinated people watching them. When they reached the back room, Taylor did a double-take.
"Scapetti?"
"Get in here, kid. My beer's getting warm."
The two stepped into the private parlor where a mouth-watering buffet took up one wall, with drinks and deserts on a corner table. There were two women with Scapetti in the room—one was a young, lean figure with her black hair shaved almost to her skull. It was Laura Davis, the sniper who lost her leg against Overmind.
She stood now, so she had to have some type of prosthetic.
The other woman was heavier-set but still in good shape. Her hair hung to her shoulders in what almost looked like a typical soccer-mom style. Hazel eyes studied Taylor from behind a black domino mask.
"Horizon?"
"Good to see you, Quintessence," the Protectorate hero said. "Come in and grab some food. Insight, the door?"
Sarah closed the door and then drifted straight to the buffet.
Confused and fighting to keep her shields up, Taylor had to admit she was starving. She grabbed one of the lobsters and went from there. She settled down at the table with the other four.
"Eat," Horizon said. "We can talk after. You've had a long day."
And wasn't that an understatement? Taylor ate. After six months in juvenile detention, the food tasted heavenly and she ate until her sides hurt. Then she had two more bites before she settled back in her seat and studied the others.
Scapetti was telling a joke to his team mate, laughing as if were hilarious while she shook her head in disgust she didn't actually feel. Sarah, beside Taylor, was watching everyone else while she picked at a plate of vegetables.
"I can't eat bugs," she explained when she didn't touch the crab or lobster.
Finally, Horizon cleared her throat. "So, introductions."
She removed her mask to reveal…a perfectly ordinary early thirty-something woman. "Maria Whitworth. I was slated to form a Protectorate team in Anchorage, Alaska. However, when Alexandria told me about her plans for you, I asked to be a part of this. So, I'm the Protectorate Team Leader for the newly chartered Rapid Deployment Protectorate Team."
She looked to her left.
"Special Agent Linda Davis," the lean woman said. "I'm PRT-trained, specializing in special weapons. Sniper and tinker tech."
"Charles Scapetti," the scarred man said. "Former marine, joined PRT after the Furlough of '06. Senior Agent in Charge."
It was Sarah's turn. She took off her mask. "Sarah Livsey. Former unwilling villain, former burn victim, Thinker 8. Think of Sherlock on speed. I'm alive because of you, Taylor. And this whole thing? My idea. Or at least, the details are mine. I think Alexandria already had an idea."
And suddenly what the girl said earlier made sense. "And Coil's money?"
"The best kind of team is one that doesn't cost too much," Sarah said with a grin.
"That's how Legend got the team approved," Horizon—Maria—admitted. "Our start-up budget is just barely enough to cover salaries, benefits and basic equipment. Enough to rent an old building. Washington believes it's because we're just lip-service to one of Costa-Brown's pet senators. But mainly it's because Dragon examined your tinker-tech and believes that we won't really need a lot of equipment."
She was aware that everyone was looking at her. "My life has been on television for the past year. Fairly certain you know who I am."
"Not in your own words," Maria said. "Who is Quintessence?"
Feeling silly, Taylor said her name. Then… "My power isn't what you think. I don't have a ton of different powers like Eidolon. My power is a key, letting me access energy that's already there. It's how my telepathy works; my telekinesis. It's how I know there are eighty-nine people in this place outside those doors, four of which are PRT agents. They feel familiar—your team, Scapetti."
The SAC gave a pleased nod.
"And your tinker-tech?" Horizon asked.
Taylor shrugged. "My power came with a user's manual. Memories. From someone who died long ago, in a galaxy far, far away. I don't have tinker-tech, I have knowledge. I understand the physics and engineering of everything I make. It's just thousands of years more advanced than what we have."
"So, what are we talking about?" Scapetti asked. "Weapons?"
"Weapons. Transport. Medicine. Artificial intelligence."
"Like those laser batons of yours?" Davis asked.
Taylor shook her head. "Those are special. Only someone with my skillset can use them. But I can build you actual stun batons of similar design. I just…why me?"
"You're the lynchpin," Sarah said. "With Overmind and the Leviathan fight, Thinktank identified a mild master-effect in the theater. You made everyone fight better. Noticeably. I was monitoring the Leviathan fight for Coil, and I saw it. Even Legend noticed."
Battle meditation. Taylor's memories supplied the information.
"You know what it is," Sarah said with a chuckle. "Of course, you do. So, here's the idea. You know how the Guild goes after the worst of the worst in Canada and even the world? We're going to be the Protectorate version of the Guild. We're authorized to pick up maybe three or four other capes. Scapetti's team will be our PRT boots. And we'll go after the worst of the worst."
"But…what about…school, and Wards and all that crap?"
"You'll have to attend school," Maria said. "But you've tested out of all your STEM courses. So, you'll only have to do three to four hours of school a day, the rest will be vocational. Meaning us. The school's for the suits in Washington and the papers. Meanwhile, we'll use some of that stolen money of Sarah's to build a training facility in the Exclusion Zone near your house because the land is essentially free, and we'll get this team moving. If you're on board."
The question surprised Taylor.
"I have a choice?"
Sarah snorted. "Of course you have a choice, doofus. The whole concept won't work as well without you, if it works at all. If you just want to be a regular Ward, just say the word. I bet Alice might even share some of her stash with you if you ask nicely enough."
"What other capes were you thinking about?" Taylor asked.
~~Quintessence~~
~~Quintessence~~
"Was my visit home your idea, too?" Taylor asked back in the car, after dinner was finished and they'd spent an hour hammering out details.
With Sarah's power, she understood that Taylor wasn't talking about the RDPT.
"They freed Yuki and me from the foam in the same room," Sarah said after a moment's heavy silence. She wasn't smiling anymore; if anything she looked faintly ill. "Left us sitting together for a while in a cell while they tried to figure out what to do with you. We had a chance to talk, me and Yuki. The only thing you guys every did together was train or have sex. She hated the training, and you hated the sex."
"So?"
"Taylor…" The other girl actually looked uncomfortable for a moment. "You know, my power really sucks sometimes. The last time I actually tried to do anything with a boy, I knew everything about him before the first kiss. Dental habits, hygiene, preferred positions. I could tell from his body language and his micro-expressions what he wanted, and it just…ruined it. Completely ruined it. I ran to the bathroom and puked my guts out, and I realized I just couldn't date. Not ever."
She glanced over to Taylor briefly. "I got a lot from Yuki. She never saw you as a person, Taylor. She can't. Something important in her never got a chance to form. She doesn't even have the capacity to see you as a human being with flaws. You are her god. And she worshipped you the only way a horribly abused little girl knew how—by fucking you as hard as she could. She just couldn't understand that's not what you wanted from her. If you went insane and murdered everyone in the city, she'd be right there with you because you can't be wrong to her. She scared the fuck out of me. Because if you told her to kill me, she would."
"It didn't stop her from cheating on me."
"That's just it, Taylor. It wasn't cheating, not to her. It was just sex. She was trained by her uncle to view sex as a commodity. It's the only currency she has, and she trades it for favors. If you're depressed, you eat ice cream. She wants sex. If she's happy, sex. It's her answer to everything. And it was eventually going to drive you nuts, because you don't actually swing that way. You never have. This way…"
She stopped, but Taylor understood. "This way she has someone else to take care of her."
"Yeah. I'm kind of jealous, too. If I could have a relationship? Obsidian's a stand-up kind of guy."
"And hung like a horse."
"My power told me that. But you saw it, didn't you?"
"Holy shit, I did. I'm amazed Yuki could walk." Taylor looked out over the road. It started raining again, making Sarah slow just to be safe as they headed south over the obliterated heart of old Downtown. "The worst part is that I'm just not mad about it."
Sarah shrugged. "You're a smart girl, Taylor. You knew it wasn't going to work. I'd imagined you felt either relieved or…no, free. You felt free."
"So, you want me to thank you?"
Sarah shook her head. "No. But…a place to crash might be nice. I came in from San Diego this morning. And I was confined to the Protectorate Wards base in San Diego while I was there. Six-month probationary status, you see." She glanced at Taylor and backtracked. "I mean…if not, I get it. I can get a hotel or something."
"It's fine, I just don't have a spare bed set up."
After a few minutes of driving, Sarah said in a small voice: "I'm sorry."
They pulled up to the house twenty minutes later. Taylor used the Force to open the garage—the little, beaten up sedan was gone. Sarah pulled into the lighted space and said nothing as Taylor climbed out of the car and closed the door behind them.
All of Sarah's personal belongings fit into a single PRT-black duffel back that she threw over her shoulder. She followed Taylor without saying a word out of the garage and into the kitchen and dining area. The lights were off; the cake was on the counter right where Taylor saw it last.
Sarah tactfully said nothing about the misspelling.
"Full tour?"
"Sure."
Taylor led her out into the old sanctuary. The floor's training mats gave a little a little under her feet.
"Training area. We don't have a lot of equipment, but I suppose we could get some." She pointed out the offices above the former front entrance of the church.
"Could be spare bedrooms, I guess."
They went up the stairs. Taylor could smell Yuki in the air—not just the musk of her sweat, but also the floral perfume she preferred, and the cherry-scented shampoo. Taylor showed Sarah the guest suite that had its own restroom but no furniture, and then her bedroom.
It was the only room that actually looked lived-in.
"Holy shit this place is a pig-sty."
"Huh, I guess I didn't notice that much before," Taylor admitted.
The room was covered in fast-food wrappers, take-out bags and half-empty cartons. Liquor bottles filled almost every available surface, some empty but none completely full. Taylor saw not one, but three separate bongs and a few other paraphernalia that explained some of the more obnoxious smells.
"All Yuki," Sarah said, as if reading Taylor's mind. "Obsidian's a high-level brute. Drugs don't work on him. He might have drunk some, but the hard stuff is all Yuki. Damn, that girl is seriously fucked up."
Frowning, Taylor strode through the room to the safe. It stood open and empty—all the money she'd earned reduced to a few measly dollars. Gone to drugs, Taylor guessed.
"I have some cots in the garage, from before we got all this done," Taylor said. "Cots, sleeping bags and spare pillows."
"That sounds pretty good," Sarah agreed.
They set the cots up in the spare bedroom.
While Sarah was preparing hers, Taylor ventured back into the other bedroom. In the closet, she found her things untouched and covered in a thin layer of dust. Even her toiletries were right where she left them. She gathered some pajamas and her toiletries before returning to the other room.
She walked in as Sarah was finishing a call.
"That was Seneca. I bought us the weekend," she said. "We have to be at PRT headquarters Monday at 8 am sharp, but we're free until then. Only thing tomorrow will be the Social Worker. I figured you don't want to put that off."
"Thanks," Taylor said, more relieved than she would have believed.
"Well, the place is filthy and I doubt there's any real food in your kitchen. And that safe of yours might be empty, but I have an American Express linked to my accounts. So, my treat. Furniture, clothes, equipment, food, whatever we need."
"Right now, I need a shower."
~~Quintessence~~
~~Quintessence~~
Sarah liked to shop. The experience of shopping with her the next day was so polar opposite of Yuki it left Taylor a little breathless.
The first thing they bought were red-tinted oval sunglasses to hide Taylor's black eyes and baseball caps for their hair. Sarah took an odd pleasure in braiding Taylor's hair to fit through the opening on the back of a hat. There was nothing sensual at all, rather it just felt like something she might have done with Emma. If it were Yuki, she would have been nuzzling Taylor's neck and pawing at her breasts.
It felt odd to walk around openly on a Saturday, just two ordinary teenage girls, shopping in stores Taylor would never have bothered with on her own. They shopped for everything from clothes to furnishings.
They ate lunch at a ridiculously overpriced bistro near the University. Sarah took great pleasure shooting down a handsome college boy who started snooping around.
"We're both underage, Don Juan," she told him with a vulpine grin.
Playing along, Taylor grinned. "I don't know, he's awfully cute. It might be worth him going to jail."
Rather than take offense, the young man actually laughed. "That's me told. You two are way too much trouble for me."
When he walked away, Sarah sighed wistfully. "He would have been a good catch. Upper middle class, hard worker. He's pre-med. Prefers anal, though."
Taylor turned and stared. "Bullshit."
"You can sense lies. You tell me. He was staring at your ass when you walked out. Doesn't care about what's up top or what's in front."
Taylor tried not to sputter. "Pre-med, huh?"
"He's also smart enough to not fall for jailbait. We're dressed and acting older than our ages, he just couldn't tell."
Taylor met the other girl's eyes. Sarah stared back, still with that wistful smile. "I sense a new laptop in my future," the Thinker said.
"Oh, do you?"
She did; a very expensive laptop, with a dedicated docking station and three separate wide-screen LCD monitors to go with it.
So the day went; two teenage girls shopping as if they had rich parents. The furniture items they bought were to be delivered Sunday. They returned to the house long enough to drop off their purchases before they went on a second shopping trip for groceries and dinner.
They sat at the dining room table after the sun set, dwarfed by the space around them, eating Pad Thai. They finished with cake.
"Buy 'n Large," Sarah said with a sigh of disappointment. "Box cake from a box store."
Taylor had to admit it wasn't very good. But she'd have eaten it, if Yuki was there. And then they would have had sex, and…
…and she was crying. And Sarah was there, sitting next to her with an arm around her shoulder without saying a word.
"She never visited," Taylor said when the worst of the storm passed. "She never called or wrote. I thought she'd be there when I got out, but instead she was here fucking Todd."
"Todd? Obsidian's name is Todd?"
"He looked like a god,. His name could have been Susan and he'd make it sound good," Taylor muttered. "I just… It never felt right, but I tried. I was so lonely—so tired of being alone—that I tried. And I thought it meant something. But…but…"
"But she was broken, and you couldn't fix her," Sarah said. She reached over and pulled Taylor's chin over. Again, there was nothing sensual about the move. Rather, it felt motherly.
"Listen, Taylor. Use your power and listen to me. You can't fix her. She'd need a lifetime of therapy to fix what her uncle did to her. All you could do is waste your life trying to love someone who isn't capable of loving you back. I know it hurts, but… Shit. I know it hurts. I'm sorry."
Taylor responded by gathering up the trash from their meal, piling it on top of the cake, and throwing it all away.
"Wait here," Lisa said.
She ran upstairs, and returned moments later with a bottle of amber fluid. Taylor watched in silence she took two of their four glasses and poured them each a shot of the whiskey.
"You know this stuff is shit," Taylor said.
"Sweetie, there's sipping whiskey, and there's rotgut. And there's a time and place for each." She held up her glass. "Fuck the exes."
Grinning weakly, Taylor wiped her eyes and clinked her glass to the other. "Fuck the exes."
Both girls coughed and gasped. "Holy fuck, that burns," Sarah said.
She poured another anyway and raised it up. "Fuck Coil!"
"Fuck Coil," Taylor agreed.
It didn't burn quite as much as the second time.
"Fuck Emma Barnes!"
"Fuck Accord!"
"Fuck Rime!"
"Who?"
"Alexandria's second. God I hate that bitch so much," Sarah said. "She kept putting moves on me! I'm like sixteen…wait. Fuck. Seventeen! I'm underaged! She's like…a twenty-something. Fuck. How many is this?"
"The bottle's gone."
"Oh. Gonna hurt tomorrow."
"I've got ibuprofen. Take two before you sleep."
Sarah nodded, then took Taylor's hand in hers while continuing to nod shakily.
"You listen, 'kay. Not ever gonna fuck you, 'cause that's gross. Won't ever…do that shit Yuki did. But I'll be your friend. You fuckin' saved my life, Taylor. I was gonna die, and you saved me. And I love you for that. Just…God, how did you even get off? How does that even work with girls?"
"Sarah, are you a homophobe?"
"I'm not a homo, that's…my…what? No, I mean, did you guys use dildos or something?"
"No."
"Oh, you poor girl. You never got off, did you? Just…just… Oh, wow. I'm a little drunk. My power says I have a face, but I can't feel it."
She slapped her face, giggled at the slapping sound, and then slumped over the table.
Taylor too was definitely feeling the effects of the cheap whiskey. She leaned over and ran a hand through Sarah's hair.
"I'm glad you're here."
Naturally, that's when the Social Worker knocked on the front door.