Of Wasps and Wizards, Chapter 16
*Taylor*
Four-dimension limbs latched out, slithering beneath the man's bone-white costume. One of them, exploring, reached his face. Moments before they kissed, the man was ripped away, and almost immediately, the shard followed, sucked through an unimagineable hole. It was wrong in a multitude of ways. The way the Shard and the host had interacted, the way the Shard had assisted its host, even though the host behaviour was non-optimal. The way the Shard got sucked out through a break in between dimensions. Suffering and death were upon it, an end to an endless cycle that would go beyond the life of the universe, and the elevator dinged.
The thick metal doors opened without a sound, and I felt myself clenching on to the card on my lanyard, no matter how times I'd gone through that, I hadn't gotten used to it yet.
According to Harry, when he used his sight, it was largely visual. Same with his Soulgazes. Maybe it was because of my Shard, or a feature of my personality and my talents, but my vision seemed to be more abstract, less bound to the traditional senses of the human mind.
But even though my vision was different, one thing remained the same. It didn't fade. It had been three days now, and I still saw it in my head like I was right there. The entire thing was strange. Kravos, the warlock, had somehow interacted with Genoscythe's Shard, and through that, created some sort of analogue to a trigger vision in me and Vicky. However, that meant that what I'd seen was, at least partly, through my Shard's senses, and therefore infused with what was probably best described as its emotions. Problem was, they weren't really emotions, at least not in the way I knew them. Instead, they belonged to something far too alien for me to understand.
I stepped out of the elevator, and walked through the hallways, until eventually reaching the office I was there for. If anything, this reminded me of the times I'd been called into principal Blackwell's office, back at Winslow. Only instead of talking to a high-school principal, I had an appointment with the angry leader of the local Protectorate planned.
I stood in front of the door, which largely consisted out of frosted glass, with the word Revel spelled out on it in the same flowing type that was used in official PRT merchandise, the lines of the letters reminiscent of the paths her orbs took through the sky. I knocked on the glass, resisting the urge to tap out 'shave and a haircut'. It was what Harry would have done, if he hadn't decided on something like the Imperial March instead. Not doing what he would've done was probably the right idea here, although I couldn't really expect anything like a fair deal from the head of the Protectorate.
A green light suddenly appeared next to the door, courtesy of a tiny little LED. Then, it slowly began to open, having been unlocked from the inside.
"Come in," Revel's voice came from her office. By the sound of it, she was still sitting in her chair, meaning the door probably opened mechanically.
I obliged, and entered the room, feeling the door automatically close behind me.
Revel's office was… not how I'd expected it. For someone with a costume that was so obviously Asian, the décor looked remarkably American. Her metal desk had a computer, two neat piles of paperwork, and a novelty penholder in the shape of her costume. She had two mugs on the table, one of which read #2 boss, the other with a picture of the Chicago Protectorate, with a slightley different line-up. Going by the fact that Harry wasn't wearing half his equipment, and Snaptrap was absent, it was a few years old. The walls were largely empty, apart from a few posters, and a calender with a large picture of Bastion for the month of July. His racist outburst hadn't happened yet when they designed this particular hunk of the month calender.
"Sit down please Skitter," Revel said, pointing at a chair in front of her desk. She wasn't wearing her costume, instead limiting herself to just her mask and a casual dress. I obliged, and sat down on the chair.
"You wanted to talk to me?" I asked.
"I did," she replied, taking off her mask with one hand, showing me the lower half of her face. "I hear Harry's been teaching you magic?"
Sitting in front of her, I was oddly conscious of my own costume. I hadn't really done too much with it since I created it. Harry was going to help me put a protective enchantment on it, but the level of skill that that required was beyond me right now. What was the ettiquette here? Was I supposed to take off my own mask? That's what I'd done when I'd met with the Undersiders, back on that rooftop all those months ago.
"He has," I replied.
"I've got to admit… I really did not think he'd been telling me the truth all along. I'd get angry at him but but he didn't even lie."
"I'm guessing you figured it out?" I asked her.
"His old teacher, Blackstaff, gave me the insight I needed to understand I'd been an idiot all along."
"I hope you didn't take it as badly as I did."
"The Tattletale thing, I presume?" she asked.
I nodded.
"How is she, by the way?"
"Recovering," I answered. "She hasn't had any Thinker headaches since she, well, died. So she thought she wasn't going to get them anymore. But as it turns out, it's just that she couldn't feel them, so when they finally became too much, they hit all at once." I replied.
"Like when the adrenaline runs off after a fight, I guess?"
"Probably. I'd ask her, but, well…"
"I get it," she said.
I looked around her office awkwardly, not entirely sure if the conversation was finished or not. I didn't really think she'd only called me here to talk about magic, but she was letting a rather unsettling pause fall into the conversation.
"So, do you know why I actually called you in?" Revel asked after an awkward minute or so.
I thought about it, again, but still wasn't entirely sure. Was she angry about how I handled the Warlock situation? About involving Glory Girl in my investigation?
"No" I answered.
"I thought so," she replied. In other words, she asked a question that was roughly on par with 'do you know how fast you were going?'
I suddenly really didn't feel like finishing this conversation.
"Do you remember the rules I laid out for you? Back during the Hexenwolf thing?" she asked.
I thought back to the conversation. To be fair, it'd been just a few hours before I awoke my magic, so it wasn't something I'd been focused on, but I did remember us making a deal of sorts. Of course, she was in the perfect position to arrest me at the time, so it hadn't been much of a fair deal, but she'd basically ordered me not to take any pro-active action on my own. I hadn't thought much of it, since I'd been much too busy studying the books on magic Harry had been providing me with, but that rule had been there.
"This is about me trying to save Genoscythe," I answered.
"No, this is about you deciding to go after that Warlock on your own, even after Shuffle advised you to sit this one out," she said.
"Look, we wanted to call for back-up, but Victoria's phone broke down and we didn't have the time," I explained. I knew it hadn't been a good plan, attacking right then and there without a proper plan or back-up, but I couldn't just sit there and watch as the Warlock was killing someone.
"And that's not what I'm angry about," Revel replied. "I'm angry about the fact that you were there at all."
"What, so I should have just left Genoscythe to die!" I yelled.
"No, that's not what I'm saying, and you're not listening to me," she said, exasperated.
"Well seems to me like you're saying me fighting the Warlock was a bad thing!" I said, trying to calm myself down, and failing.
"Look, Taylor… It's not about you doing what you did in that situation, it's about you even being in that situation. You're sixteen, you shouldn't be in situations where you have to go in without backup to save someone's life!" Revel said, but I was barely even listening.
Taylor… She knew who I was. First Harry, then Amy and Vicky… was my identity just an open secret these days?
"Who told you?" I demanded.
Revel's hand went to her head, as if she was nursing a headache. "You do remember the part where I got you into those online classes, right?" she asked.
Oh, right. The classes I was following… It actually did make sense that she'd need my name to sign me up for those. I just hadn't thought about what they had meant, being too busy with my magical studies.
"Anyway… As I was saying, you shouldn't be getting into situations like that at all. If you had a lead, you should've brought it to Shuffle, who would've made sure a full strike team was sent out. You're young, and if I'm to believe Ebby, you have another three centuries ahead of you. I've seen where the path you're walking leads to, and trust me, you don't want to go there. Not now, while you still have your whole live ahead of you."
"So I should just let people like this Kravos guy do what they want?" I asked.
"No, but you should try to accept that you don't have to solve everything yourself. I've been in this game for over a decade, the Triumvirate for more than twice that. Ebby goes back several centuries. What I want is for you to actually ask for help if there's something you're having trouble with."
"But what if I can't? What if I have to act right then and there? What if me asking for help leads to people dying? You can't just always ask people to bail you out!" I said, half-yelling at her moralizing.
"If you can't, then you act, and you make sure you're never in that situation again," she replied, a dark mood on her face. "You're smart and inventive, even without magic, you should be able to figure something out."
I sat back in the chair, folding my arms. What she said made sense, in a twisted sort of way, but I didn't exactly agree with it. First of all, she hadn't even been there. Furthermore, there hadn't been a lot of time between finding the warlock and actually fighting him, and I was pretty sure that Shuffle wouldn't believe me if I said I had information from a fairy.
I decided to tell Revel that. She responded by smacking her hand into her face, making sure not to hit the area where her mask would have been, had she been wearing it.
"Taylor, we've known about Toot for a couple of years now. Had Shuffle known you had a way of contacting him, he would've taken your advice immediately."
"That's not the point," I replied. "Anyway, was there anything else?"
"Yes, although the topic is related," she said. "As someone who's been on both sides of Glory Girl's aura, what's your impression of her?"
"What do you mean exactly?"
"I mean you've fought both with and against her. We've had some… interesting reports brought over from the remnants of the Brockton Bay PRT. They didn't exactly have any evidence to go with them though, which is why I'm gathering information."
"Well…" I said, thinking back to the bank-job. The way she and her sister had threatened me and Tattletale. It wasn't something that reflected well upon me, and Lisa certainly hadn't been going easy on them.
But, I had to admit, I'd been absolutely terrified of them. Yes, her aura played a role in that, and I'd been more afraid of Panacea than of her sister, but depending on what Revel was going on about…
"I… It's hard to say exactly, and I don't want to rat out my friend…" I said, thinking about what to say. Glory Girl could be absolutely terrifying, and she seemed to be perfectly happy to break some bones in order to win a fight. Then again, after what I'd done to Lung's man-parts, I had little right to speak about someone going all out. Even if most of that had been the fault of Armsmaster's tranquilizer. "I'd say she can certainly come across as overly violent… but partly that's her aura, and partly that's her being a cape? I mean, she's not perfect, but she didn't do anything I wouldn't have done in her situation, at least I don't think so."
"I see…" Revel replied, and I realized that 'she didn't do anything I wouldn't have done' did not necessarily reflect well on her, given my own reputation, and Revel's anger at me.
"Well, then I think we're about done here," Revel said, and as I was about to stand up, she continued. "But before you leave, two things. One, if you pull something like this again, you're going straight into the Wards program. Two, the director is busy finalizing the recruitment of a bunch of new Wards. I'd prefer it if you came by in a few days to say hello to them, make sure there's no miscommunications in the field."
I nodded, and left, trying not to think about how much power Revel had over me, just by virtue of my past actions with the Undersiders.