A/N: Review responses are in my forums as normal.
Chapter Forty-Eight: The Boy Who Tried*
Drifting in the Force between life and death, Taylor watched as Yuki walked somberly through a featureless white hall. She was wearing one of Taylor's shirts over black boxers-the same she wore the previous night.
As she walked, she was nervously pulling her fingers and looking around the featureless white hallway. "Will she ever love me again?"
Almost one with the Force, freed from the constraints of her body and all the hormones that drove it, Taylor smiled sadly. I never stopped, silly.
In her vision, Yuki stumbled. "Taylor? What's happening?"
"She's been hurt," a familiar voice said. Taylor couldn't sense who was speaking-they were a blind spot in the Force, like the Siberian. But through Yuki she saw Contessa. Through Yuki's eyes, the cape looked even more beautiful than Taylor remembered. Naturally. Yuki thought she was hot. "She's dying."
"What? But...you have to save her! You have to!"
"I can't," Contessa said. "Alexandria will try to get Panacea to help her, but it's going to be hard. She's been hurt very badly."
"We've got to do something!" Yuki screamed.
"We are," Contessa said. "We're going to save the world."
Before Taylor could reach out to assure Yuki that even if she died it would be okay, something ripped her from the Force. The violence of the action made her soul ache. The ache became agonizing, unbearable pain. She tried to draw breath to scream, but even that was stolen from her. For one terrible instant, she saw nothing but darkness and felt nothing but agony.
Finally, the moment passed. She opened her mouth and drew in a long, desperate breath. She turned on her side and moaned as someone held her. As the shock of what just happened receded and Taylor fought desperately to find balance in the Force, she heard others speaking.
"...can't stop it. It had some type of failsafe. Probably Manton. It's selecting a target and preparing to fire, and we can't stop it."
Taylor forced her eyes open. Her helmet was off. Holding her was Mujaji. She'd removed her helmet too. "You with us?" her friend asked.
"What...happened?"
"Alexandria fucking kidnapped me is what happened." With effort, Taylor turned her head to stare at a disheveled Panacea, still in her sleeping gown. The gown was covered in prints of Winnie the Poo eating honey or playing with Piglet. For some reason, it brought a smile to her face. "You saved me."
"Yeah," Panacea said grumpily. "That's two you owe me. I'd better get fucking paid. I don't do this shit for free anymore."
Laughing on the verge of mania, Taylor sat up. Mujaji helped her the entire time. Once sat up, she finally saw what Insight and Dragon were talking about.
Wait, when did they arrive?
The two Thinkers, one human, one a droid, stood looking over the massive turbolaser cannon that was tracking a target with steady clinks across the night sky. "We can't blow it up?" Taylor asked.
"Rigged," Insight said.
"The energy powering it is an exotic material I've never seen before," Dragon said. "I do recognize the failsafes, though. If we interfere, it will blow. It could take the entire state out."
Mujaji helped Taylor to her feet. She smiled when Taylor gave her a hug. "Everyone safe?"
The Alexandria-package shook her head, her eyes moist. "We lost ten people."
Ten?
Mujaji kept an arm around Taylor to make sure she was steady as they walked toward the device. Around them, more PRT teams had arrived from the emergency standby. "What about the Nine?"
"Accounted for," Horizon said. "Thanks to Eidolon, there, even Crawler's handled."
Taylor turned where her leader pointed and saw the entire Triumvirate standing together nearby, talking quietly. "Where'd he send him, the sun?"
"Better. Ashbeast," Mujaji said. "Let those fuckers work it out between themselves."
The power-house of the JORD team got Taylor to Insight and Dragon. Dragon turned to her with a worried frown. "This is your tech, Quintessence."
"What?" With a brief hug of thanks to Mujaji, Taylor leaned forward weakly toward the device, only to feel her gut drop.
It looked like a turbolaser cannon because it was a turbolaser cannon. Only, not just a cannon. Dragon wordlessly pointed to the symbols on a side panel that were counting down. Aurebesh, the final written language of the Coruscant galaxy. It was the language she programmed her droids in, and wrote her operating systems in. And what it told her was that she wasn't looking at just a capital-ship sized turbolaser.
The device used hypermatter. It had ten grams in a magnetic containment field in the center of the firing chamber, ready to be obliterated with an equal amount of anti-matter to be directed in a single contained beam.
"My God," Taylor whispered. "My God. Shit! It's a miniaturized superlaser."
"That's bad?" Insight asked.
She felt a hand on her shoulder and turned to see Alexandria staring at her through her visor. "Explain."
"This is my tech! This is….this was the technology of the galaxy where Entities last came from. It's a superlaser. It's what the Republic used to kill Entities. Alexandria, this thing won't just crack a continent. It could destroy the world."
"Well, at the moment it's aimed at the Simurgh," Dragon noted with a brittle calm.
Taylor didn't have time to feel the terror that statement should have delivered. Because, if nothing else, history showed that even thinking about trying to target the Endbringers with something that could actually hurt them always resulted in that very Endbringer attacking preemptively.
The Force suddenly screamed in danger, but the warning was redundant. The sky overhead exploded with heat energy and sonic booms as the Simurgh dropped from Orbit at near relativistic speeds.
"Scatter!" Taylor screamed.
The superlaser cannon continued to track toward the Endbringer as she dropped, and then fired. The blinding green light cast the entire state in shadow as it burned through the atmosphere toward the angelic Endbringer.
The Simurgh simply rolled to the side to avoid the powerful blast, and then landed on the now spent weapon. The Force groaned as an alien, intrusive scream permeated through it. Taylor tried to push it back, but the power of it overwhelmed her instantly.
The Triumvirate attacked the Endbringer without hesitation. The JORD team retreated as houses all around them exploded almost simultaneously and shot into the air, spinning around the Endbringer in the grips of unbelievable telekinesis as she began changing the superlaser into something else.
Something far worse.
Mujaji was using her flight to help the JORD agents get to a safe distance, if there was such a thing. Dragon was carrying Insight with Horizon using her jump jets to follow. It was like trying to walk in a hurricane. They were insignificant compared to the power just the Triumvirate brought to the table.
The three elder heroes fought with a desperate intensity Taylor hadn't even seen in Brockton Bay. Legend's lasers were themselves almost as powerful as a turbolaser cannon. Eidolon deployed a strange gravity power that ripped whole sections of the Simurgh's funnel of debris from the sky, opening windows for Alexandria to speed in and strike her.
The attacks bought precious time to flee.
As she ran, though, Taylor was aware of the screaming through the Force. It didn't just ring in her mind, she could feel it actually burning at her Force presence, as it trying to dissolve her very essence. But within that signal, she felt something else.
Something familiar-a numbingly powerful pulse of energy that was more than a radio wave but less than true telepathy. It wasn't part of the signal the Simurgh used to broadcast with her 'song'. Instead, it was a powerful signal being transmitted to the Endbringer itself. And unlike the last time Taylor sensed it, this time she could actually see where the streams of hatred, self-loathing and jealousy came from. The emotions she sensed flowing into the Simurgh, driving it like a remote control, were human.
And they were coming from Eidolon.
Eidolon was driving the Endbringers.
She tapped her come switch. "This is Quintessence to anyone who can hear me. I need the Triumvirate on a channel right now or everyone dies."
"Quintessence this is Oracle. I'm patching you through to Protectorate main com. Protectorate Main, this is ORACLE with JORD. Simurgh has descended on Dunning, Nebraska. Triumvirate and JORD on site, no established communication. Quintessence needs priority access to Triumvirate coms."
Taylor stumbled as she watched the titanic fight. She considered trying to join, but knew that even with the Force as her ally there was little she could do to the Simurgh. The Force was almost rendered moot by her scream. At that moment, Taylor doubted she could have even levitated a pencil.
"Oracle, this is Protectorate Main. Copy, Endbringer in action, Triumvirate on site. Quintessence, hold while we connect you."
Taylor didn't have long to wait. A stressed, angry voice said that was most definitely not Eidolon said, "We're a little busy."
"Alexandria, all of you, listen to me." Taylor said. "It's Eidolon. I sensed it in Brockton Bay, but I'm sure now. The Endbringers are...fuck. They're part of Eidolon's power. He's unconsciously ordering them to attack and destroy!"
In the sky, the most powerful cape alive dropped from the air for a moment.
Alexandria said nothing. Legend actually reacted by shooting more lasers at the winged, angelic monster.
"That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard," an deeply angry male voice snapped. "I've been fighting these things since they emerged."
Taylor's mind felt like it was bleeding from the Simurgh's song. "Because you needed a challenge. I read your biography. There wasn't a single cape in the world that could challenge you. You didn't have a really good fight until Behemoth emerged in '92. Eidolon, I can sense you sending the signal! You're sending it right now. It's carried on the same telepathic wave that… oh shit!"
The Simurgh was evidently tired of Taylor interfering with the fight. So she sent the bell of a water tower shooting at her. Desperately, Taylor tried to summon the Force, but her power burned under the Simurgh's cry, rendering her all but powerless.
Suddenly Campanile blew up to his full height and shoulder-checked the massive bell. He cried in pain as his shoulder snapped, but it diverted the tower bell enough to allow Taylor to kick in her jump jet and fly free.
The air between Taylor and the Simurgh suddenly shimmered. Other heroes had arrived-the tall, statuesque form of Narwhal descended between them. A flying cape Taylor didn't recognize deposited another cape and between he and Narwhal, the shield expanded even further. Still more capes arrived blasting the Simurgh with an array of exotic and impossible powers.
Abruptly Eidolon was there in front of her. To Taylor's shock he ripped off his mask to reveal the same ugly, misshapen nose she saw in her visions. His eyes were red and his lips pulled back in a rictus of rage. "Why did you say that! Why did you lie like that?"
Rage. Self-hatred and a crushing sense of worthlessness. Face to face, the turmoil and hopelessness in the man's mind struck almost as hard as the Simurgh's telepathic scream. The feelings brought tears to her eyes.
"Please, let me help you," she whispered. "The world needs you. Please…"
He stood staring at her, a tear running down a pockmarked cheek. "They've killed millions…"
"You couldn't have known. Please, please let me help you!"
As more and more capes arrived to battle the Endbringer, Eidolon stared at her with a look of such despair it was almost more than she could bear. Finally, though, he nodded. He didn't move as she brought her hands to his face.
With the contact came a memory, so clear that she felt as if she were there. A young Contessa, in a school girl uniform, sat next to a tall, stately black woman in a white coat. They sat at a table across from a wiry-thin, acne-scarred young man with thinning brown hair and a bent spine in a wheelchair.
"You tried to take your life. The army, it was something you wanted?"
The question almost broke Taylor out of her meditation, so much so that she missed what he said in return. When she returned, she heard the young man responding. There was an intense, desperate emotion in his words. "I wanted to go do something of my own will. Take charge, take action. Stop living a life where everything is decided for me."
"By joining the army?" the woman in the labcoat asked.
The young man's short bark of laughter sounded frantic and utterly without humor. "I know. Stupid."
"You wanted independence. I can't promise it. In fact, if this deal with the devil goes through, it might be something I demand from you. Your assistance, your aid. I need a soldier."
"We still need a soldier," Taylor whispered. "We still need you."
Tears were running down his craggy cheeks. He'd lived through the memory of that one moment in time that changed his life. "Do it," he said over the din of an increasingly desperate Endbringer battle.
With a cry at the sheer effort, Taylor dove into that maelstrom of dark emotions that surrounded the core of Eidolon. It burned at her mind almost as strongly as the Simurgh's scream. There were no visual impulses; no artistic metaphors to explain the connection. Only pure emotion and a seemingly endless supply of powers, as if he were an entity himself.
Emotion. Psychic energy almost like a song.
Almost like the Simurgh's scream.
Touching it with her own mind hurt horribly. She moaned just from the touch, but pushed on anyway. She pushed, and shaped, and pushed some more at the core of dark emotions that clouded Eidolon's life. And with each attempt, the tenor of the emotions and the connection he shared with the Simurgh changed.
Until, abruptly, Taylor pushed through. She pushed through to a room, with a man in a rocking chair wearing a uniform. Little David sat on his lap, staring at the purple heart on the man's chest. "I want to be like you, Dad."
The little boy was half the size of his peers. He was six, but looked four because of the seizures that stunted his growth and made it so hard to run and play. "Can I be?"
The father looked down, his smile only surface deep to hide a crushing grief. "You can always try, David. No matter what the world throws at you, you can still pick yourself up and try."
"Will you hold my hand? Sometimes it's hard to run."
"Yeah, son. I'll hold your hand."
The cloud broke. Taylor was barely aware of how she and Eidolon both fell to their knees. She wasn't aware of Legend and Alexandria both desperately trying to hold the Simurgh back from completing her version of a superlaser. All she was aware of was an endless well of powers, and a clumsy, uncertain boy still not sure what to do with it.
Her mind joined with his in a single gestalt. In a way, she held his hands. Like this.
She showed him, and he followed with a look of childlike wonder on his face, as they began to tune the signal of his power. As they tuned his power, the Simurgh's song stopped burning so intensely through the Force.
They continued, shaping not just his powers, but his control of them. It shocked Taylor in a way that Eidolon had never had true control of his powers. The shard that infected him selected the powers it thought he needed, but even then he never had the time to truly learn or control them. His powers were such that he could hurt himself with them. The limitations that other capes had-Manton limits-did not extend to his.
Because his was a power that was never intended to be released.
Abruptly the Simurgh's song ended. Taylor's ears stopped ringing with the battle raging nearby. The silence that followed felt numbing, but all that mattered was the heavy older face she held so delicately in her hands.
David Eisenhorn stared back at her, his jaw agape and his cheeks glistening with tears. "I never knew," he whispered. "I wasn't losing power; I was losing control. I can feel them."
Gloved hands reached up to her own. He was unabashedly weeping as he stared at her. "They said you were going to save the world. And...and I think you just did. You saved the world by saving me!"
He glanced down where he'd thrown his mask and hood. He quickly put them back on and rose effortlessly in the air.
Taylor sat back on her rump, exhausted and hurting. "I'm not sure that's what they meant," she muttered to herself.
She turned to follow where he flew and saw a sight she never thought she'd see.
The Simurgh hung in the air, perfectly still, over a radically altered superlaser cannon. The capes that arrived backed off when she stopped responding to their attacks. Taylor watched as Eidolon flew to Alexandria and Legend, excitedly talking. He pointed back in Taylor's direction twice, then to the Simurgh.
Abruptly her view was blocked by the shimmering violet scales of Narwhal. Taylor looked up at the woman who, a year and a half ago, tried so hard to kill her. "What'd you do?" the Canadian cape said sharply.
"I cured Eidolon," Taylor said.
"What was wrong with him?"
Chuckling tiredly, Taylor said, "Sorry. Healer-patient privilege. Wouldn't want to violate HIPPA or anything."
The beautiful cape stared at her for a long moment, but she herself laughed. "I was wrong about you, back then. I'm sorry."
"That's okay. I was wrong too. Just had some growing up to do."
Narwhal leaned down and offered her a hand. In the sudden, blessedly silence of the Force, she sensed only exhaustion and chagrin in the woman. She accepted the hand, and together they began walking tiredly toward the Simurgh.
"Did he use his power to stop the Simurgh somehow?"
"Something like that."
A rumble of the earth below them made several of the attending capes share frightened expression. Taylor opened her still raw mind to the Force, but felt only a general sense of unease, rather than true danger.
That didn't explain the volcano that suddenly erupted in a field outside the city.
"Holy fuck!" Narwhal shouted. Hers was lost in a chorus of similar shouts of dismay and alarm as Behemoth crawled up out of the ground. Rather than attack, though, he just emerged to his full forty-foot height and went perfectly still. A craggy, rock-like creature, his sole red eye glared out unblinkingly across the plain.
A pillar of water shot up from the nearby Dismal River. More capes screamed their alarm as Leviathan climbed out of the River. Somehow, the engine of chaos had used rivers to reach the center of the continental United States in just minutes.
"What's going on?" another cape shouted.
Taylor looked and saw Chevalier, standing amidst a team of heroes.
Let's run with it. "I telepathically showed Eidolon how to use his powers better," Taylor said, loud enough for some of the nearby heroes to hear. "Including a new power that overwrites the Endbringer's programming. He's controlling them now."
Chevalier was the fourth highest ranked cape in the Protectorate. He turned and stared at her for a long moment, before marching right up to where she still stood beside Narwhal. "What did you say?"
"I helped Eidolon gain control of the Endbringers," Taylor said, meeting his gaze squarely.
Incredulity began to spread in a wave as word passed through the assembled capes. But with it also came growing exaltation and relief. Not just that this particular Endbringer battle was over, but that future battles may not happen.
On the crest of it, though, Taylor still felt a sense of unease in the Force. She couldn't understand why, though. Around her, as realization dawned on them that Taylor was right, and that the Endbringers weren't attacking, capes began hugging each other in relief and joy. Narwhal flew into the air, looking for a friend to share her own elation with.
Taylor just stood in the field, staring at the three giants.
"Hey."
She turned to see a pale, stumbling Campanile approaching. He held his shoulder as he moved.
"Oh, damn. Just sit down, Campanile." He sat gratefully as Taylor started to immediately heal his shoulder. "That was incredibly brave of you, what you did back there," she told him.
"Well, I am a hero," he said dryly. "So, ah...you friends with Narwhal?"
"She tried to kill me."
"Back then, right? What about now? Think you could introduce us?"
Taylor snorted. "Really?"
He turned and smiled sadly. "You know how hard it is to get a date when you're eight feet tall? I might have luck with someone only a foot shorter than I am, instead of three feet shorter."
Unable to help herself, Taylor leaned down and kissed his cheek. "I'll see if I can set something up."
"Thanks, Q. I can't wait to tell mom I fought the Simurgh. You'll tell her I saved you, right?"
"You bet."
The thought of inflicting Campanile's mom on Narwhal brought a brief smile to her face. It didn't last much longer than it took to heal her teammate. The sense of danger in the Force was becoming more pronounced. She looked around until she saw Dragon with Insight in the middle of a foundation that had been stripped clean. She walked quickly toward them.
Insight looked worried and battered; Dragon's face was blank as only a droid could manage. "This doesn't feel right," Insight said.
"No, it doesn't," Taylor said. "I want you to grab the team and go. Where's Horizon?"
Sarah shook her head. "She was trying to pull Ogden out of some wreckage. The Simurgh pulled them both up. They're signals...I'm sorry."
The news momentarily stole Taylor's breath. Alexandria might have been the first Protectorate cape beside Nutcracker to believe in her, but Horizon was the first to happily work with her. Still, the loss felt oddly distant, as if she were still numb.
Because the danger. They were in danger, but Taylor couldn't understand from the Force alone why. She looked to her friends, but the two still had their helmets. Taylor couldn't see their faces, and Sarah's voice came through with an electronic modifier designed to disguise her natural tone.
She had no idea where her own helmet was, but she had secondary coms in her vambraces. She clicked the send signal. "This is Quintessence to JORD. All surviving personnel fall back to suit number 3 for evac. Priority 2."
"Quint, Scapetti. We're cut to shit and the fight's over. Repeat that, Priority 2?"
"Scapetti, my power's telling me something's wrong. Get our people out of here. Now."
He didn't argue. He'd worked with her too long not to take her seriously. "Roger. On our way."
Seeing her team on their way, Taylor started walking tiredly toward where the Triumvirate stood talking. Or where Eidolon talked and the other two listened. Legend looked incredulous; Alexandria appeared almost irritated. Her helmet shifted slightly so that she could see Taylor walking toward them. Taylor saw the woman's back stiffen as she sensed Taylor's unease. She looked as if she were about to ask why, but it became moot.
In a bloom of golden light, Scion appeared over Nebraska. And for the first time since he arrived on earth, he actually wore an expression on his face.
He looked angry.
*Some portions of dialogue were from Interlude 27 of Worm by John McCrae.
A/N: Quintessence will conclude this coming Saturday with the final chapter and epilogue.