Little Birds of Brockton Bay
I don't drink, so when I woke up in an alleyway with a pounding head and no idea where I was, I was understandably very confused. Then, a teenage superhero landed on my head while trying to escape from an oversized rage dragon and I figured out I'd been ROBed. I wasn't expecting to start a flock of little birds though...
And we're back with the first chapter of the new year! Heres hoping its a good one! Nothing else to say here, so lets get started! Enjoy!
Chapter 4
Taylor sighed as she shut her locker and started heading for her first class of the day, ignoring the looks she was getting from the students around her. She really, REALLY didn't want to be in school today, not when she still had so much to think about. She'd basically come to terms with the fact that she wasn't Human any more, if she'd ever been Human in the first place, although she wasn't best pleased that her Parents had kept it from her for so long. It kinda seemed like the sort of thing that should be included in the TALK after all.
Another big reason that she didn't really want to be in school right now was because with her Winging, she'd gained enhanced strength and durability, not to the same level as someone like Glory Girl since an Ability Type like her didn't need it, but still enough to do some serious damage to a Human without issue. Combine that with the fact she wasn't entirely sure if she could just stand there and take the abuse thrown at her for much longer without retaliating.
She could do it to. While she wasn't exactly keen on the idea of fighting (until she got her powers at least and even then, going out was more out of a sense of obligation as a Cape than anything), her Mother had made sure to teach her how to defend herself. If she wanted to, she could easily take down Emma and Madison and likely do some damage to Sophia, despite the psychos obvious familiarity with violence. The problem was that if she did that, she'd be the one to get in trouble and she still held a certain amount of hope that Emma might come back to her one day. Admittedly, it was dying fast, but it was there nonetheless.
"Well, look whos here."
Taylor paused and sighed.
"Can't this wait?" she asked as she turned to face her tormentors.
Taylor felt a momentary flare of satisfaction at the looks of surprise on the bullies faces, before Emma's face twisted back into a sickening smile.
"Now now Taylor, no need to be rude," she said in a faux sweet voice, "We just wanted to make sure you were OK. You missed school yesterday after all."
"I had...family business to deal with," saiid Taylor, "Is that all?"
Emma's expression faulted slightly at the lack of expected reaction, before she refocused on another potential weak point.
"I see you've changed your wardrobe," she said, "Its very...you Taylor."
Taylor looked down at said new wardrobe. Shortly before her Dad had taken her home the day before, Uzume and Sabah had arrived home and handed her a package that contained, much to her surprise, a Pairan brand jacket. When asked how in the hell they'd managed to get something like that from the Rogue and why they'd done so for her, they'd just smiled and Uzume had told her it was a gift to celebrate meeting her Ashikabi.
The jacket was dark gray, the same as her now destroyed costumes bodysuit with the outline of a beetle on the back in red with the number 77 on its wing covers and the Sekirei symbol just under the neck over where her own symbol was located on the back of her neck. It had a hood like her old jacket, but unlike that one, this one wasn't a size too large and did an excellent job of showing the fact that she'd developed a fair bit from the skinny girl she'd been just three months ago. While she was happy that she no longer had the chest of an 11 year old, she was mildly annoyed that she'd needed to buy three new bras in three months.
"Thanks, I like it," said Taylor, not bothering to acknowledge the implied insult.
After all, if Emma saw the label inside, she'd probably either flip her lid or faint over the fact she'd insulted a jacket made by Pairan. Plus, now that she was confronted by the three girls who'd made her life hell for the past two years, she couldn't help but be...underwhelmed. Maybe it was because they really couldn't do much to hurt her any more, the ever present warmth in the back of her head that represented her bond with Lucas, or maybe it was because of exposure to Mrs Asame's Demon Mask, but she could suddenly see the Bitches Three for what they really were. A group of immature brats with an overinflated sense of entitlement. The only one who really stood out as being particularly dangerous was Sophia and that was mainly because Taylor was sure she wasn't entirely right in the head.
"Anyway, its nearly time for first period to begin, so if you'll excuse me," she said, turning and heading down the hall.
She had not gone far before a heavy hand landed on her shoulder.
"Don't you walk away fro...WHOA?!"
Taylor reacted, grabbing the offending wrist and twisting, tripping Sophia and sending her crashing to the floor.
"Leave me alone," she said as she dropped Sophia's arm and slung her backpack back over her shoulder.
Once again, she hadn't got far before the sound of footsteps made her react, ducking under the swing Sophia took at her head and responded by planting a solid fist in her stomach, barely remembering to pull the blow enough that she didn't break anything. Despite that, the bully went flying off her feet and hit the ground hard, gasping for breath and clutching her stomach.
Taylor huffed and turned away, once again starting down the hall. She'd probably catch some flack for that later, but at this point she just didn't care anymore.
"Hold it right there bitch!"
Taylor sighed as she stopped for the fourth time and turned on her heel, ignoring the gathering crowd who were interested in the upcoming bloodbath. Some were even using their phones to record, the bastards.
"WHAT now?" she asked, now getting rather annoyed, "I don't want to be late for class!"
Sophia ignored her as she stumbled to her feet, still holding her stomach as she glared at Taylor and shrugged off Madison and Emma's attempts to help her up.
"You...you've been holding back," she snarled.
"What are you talking about?" asked Taylor.
"Don't you fuck with me!" yelled Sophia, "I know a trained punch when I see one! You've known how to fight this entire time!"
Taylor sighed. Looks like she wouldn't be getting away for a while yet. Might as well get it over with.
"Mom taught me to fight when I was a kid," she said, "Considering how dangerous this city can be, my Parents thought I should know how to defend myself."
"Then why didn't you ever fight back?!" snarled Sophia, "You've taken everything like some pathetic whipped mutt when you could have fought back at any time!"
"And where would that have got me?" snapped Taylor, "I don't know how you've managed it, but you three can apparently do no wrong in Blackwells eyes! All fighting back would have done is get me in trouble and, frankly, your not worth it. Now, if your done, I'm going to class."
There were many things in the world that Sophia Hess hated, but chief among all of them was being dismissed as a threat. The very core of her personal identity was based around being the biggest threat around, the Apex Predator as it were, so the revelation that the girl she'd long considered to be the very worst kind of weakling could have fought back at any time but considered her to be beneath her notice sent the already angry girl over the edge.
Ignoring the pain in her stomach and the shouts from her 'friends', she charged at Taylor once again. The other girl shifted and moved to counter, but Sophia, her mind basically consumed by anger and a desire to just hurt the bitch who'd dismissed her so readily, reacted instinctively and shifted into her shadow state, returning to her Human form inside Taylors guard and landing a blow to her face. Taylor stumbled back as Sophia gave a savage grin, her blood roaring in her ears.
"How do you like that bitch!?" she yelled, "Still think I'm not worth it?!"
She tensed as Taylor slowly stood, her eyes covered by her fringe.
"I see, so thats it," she muttered, "Well, it explains why Blackwell never did anything. I bet shes getting payed for you being here, although I have to wonder how much is greed and how much is maliciousness."
Sophia frowned.
"What are you talking ab…" she started, before she suddenly realized what she'd done and blanched.
She looked around, her stomach falling even further as she realized that she'd just outed herself in front of a good chunk of the school, including members of all three gangs and a good portion of the people were recording with looks of glee on their faces. She turned back to Taylor and her blood immediately began to boil at the sight of the look of satisfaction on her long time victims face.
"THIS IS YOUR FAULT!" she roared, her rage filled mind not bothering to note the fact that it really wasn't.
She didn't carry weapons in school, she wasn't that stupid, but she did know who did sport knives, even those who didn't wear them openly. Since she was already outed anyway and any real sense of coherent thought had been buried under rage and a desire to gut the bitch responsable, Sophia's hand snapped out, turning shadow to snatch a rather large combat knife of a hulking boy in ABB colour's belt before anyone could react and, once again, charge Taylor. Sure, it hasn't worked the last three times, but Sophia wasn't really thinking at that moment.
Taylor reacted with surprising speed, shifting into a stance to counter an armed opponent as a low buzzing began to fill the air, but Sophia had plenty of experience fighting skilled opponents. All it would take was shifting at just the right moment and no one would ever dismiss her again! She drew back her arm to stab Taylor and…
"WHOA nelly, thats enough of that!"
A strong hand grabbed her wrist, stopping her cold and snapping something cold and metallic around it. Her head snapped around, only for her blood to run cold, taking her rage with it when she saw the familiar red suit and annoying grin of Assault, although his ever present grin was a little more shark-like than normal. She instinctively shifted, but a massive electric shock from the Tinkertech bracelet zapped her so badly she passed out.
Taylor watched with a small amount of amusement as Sophia tried to escape, only to get zapped for her trouble. She wasn't entirely sure where Assault had come from, but she certainly wasn't going to turn down the help since she wasn't sure she could have stopped Sophia for good without using her powers.
"What is going on here?!" demanded a shrill voice as Principle Blackwell arrived on the scene, "What are you all doing here? You should be in cl…!"
She stopped short as she shoved her way into the crowd and spotted the tableau. Her eyes darted from Taylor , to the shocked looking Emma and Madison, before landing on Assault, who was still holding Sophia up by the wrist. At the sight of the Protectorate Hero holding up the obviously unconscious Ward, she went a bit of a funny colour.
"A-ah, Assault, may I ask what your doing here?" she asked.
Assault grinned.
"Well, we do like to keep an eye out for any potential issues for our members," he said, "Things like our Capes identities getting released to the public, so when we received a report of one of our probationary Wards outing herself while assaulting another student, Puppy and I were sent to pick her up."
"Please don't call me that while we're on duty," said Battery as she stepped out of the crowd holding a duffle bag in one hand, a handful of very lethal looking crossbow bolts in the other and a scowl on her face, "Now then Miss Blackwell, I believe you have some explaining to do."
Half an hour later, Taylor was feeling rather good about the day, despite the fact she was sat outside of the Principles office. After all, she'd just got to see one of her principal bullies getting dragged away by the PRT in cuffs after she'd managed to zap herself twice more trying to escape.
She hadn't been best pleased to discover that her tormentor was one of the Wards and had been ready to storm down to the PRT HQ to demand answers, but considering the fact that Battery had clearly been more than a little angry at Blackwell and the prompt response from the PRT following the outing of Stalker by her classmates meant that she was at least willing to listen to reason.
The seat beside her clattered on the floor as Assault dropped into it, a bar of chocolate clenched between his teeth and ever present grin on his face.
"So, how ya holdin up sis?" he asked.
Taylor gave the red clad man an odd look.
"Sis?" she asked.
Assaults smile widened as he turned slightly and tapped the back of his neck. On the back of his costume, barely visible since it was only a shade darker than the rest of it, was the Sekirei symbol.
"Armesy aint the only one with a birdy on his shoulder," he said.
"I...see," said Taylor.
She put that aside for the moment in favour of answering the older Sekireis actual question.
"I guess I'm fine," she said, "I'm not best pleased, but from the sound of it, Sophia's been pulling the wool over your eyes."
Assaults smile slipped slightly.
"Yeah, just a bit," he said, "Blackwell was supposed to report any infractions to us, but apparently she and her case worker decided that they wanted to keep her here, Blackwell for the extra cash and the knowledge that she had a Ward present in case any gang trouble started, and her case worker because she wanted to keep the cushy posting. The Directors on the warpath trying to find out just how far this whole thing goes, especially after we found details of that...prank with your locker."
Taylor grimaced at the reminder of the worst day of her life.
"Yeah, that should have raised some eyebrows, but somehow the cops who investigated thought that what amounts to biological terrorism wasn't worth investigating," said Assault, "Don't worry, Hess will be going down for this, as will most of the staff here at Winslow."
"Well, thats something at least," muttered Taylor.
At that moment, the door opened and a very angry looking Danny Hebert entered, followed by an equally furious looking Alan and Zoe Barnes and two people Taylor didn't know, but summised were likely Madisons Parents judging from the way the smaller girl shrank under their glares.
"Are you alright Taylor?" asked Danny.
"Yep, perfectly fine," said Taylor with a smirk.
"Good, in that case, give me ten minutes to yell at your…'Principal' and then I'm taking you home," said Danny, spitting out the word Principal like he wanted to say something a little more descriptive, "Your not staying here any longer."
"Got it," said Taylor.
Danny nodded sharply to Assault, then stormed over to the door, opening it with a little more force than was probably needed and marching inside. Taylor sat back to wait, a little disappointed that she would be missing the fireworks.
I twitched slightly as I felt another wave of emotion come down the bond I shared with Taylor, making me look up from the computer I was using in the general direction of Winslow.
"What the hell is going on over there?" I muttered.
I'd been feeling the heightened emotions since shortly before nine, ranging from aggravation, to outright anger, to a brief flash of fear, then confusion and finally satisfaction. I was tempted to call Taylor and find out what in the world was going on (no Mother dying to a mobile induced accident meant that the Hebert Household had no fear of said devices), but she was currently in school and I didn't want to interrupt. Besides, I could get the story later and was currently much more interested in the research I was doing.
After waking up and enjoying a top notch breakfast, I'd asked Tess if I could borrow one of her computers and proceeded to start figuring out what was different about this world compared with Canon Worm. The most obvious thing was the lack of any real S-rank threats in North America since any that popped up tended to get smacked down quickly by the Discipline Squad, which was basically the Guilds version of the Triumvirate, although the membership had changed over the years. The likes of Nilbog, the Machine Army, the S9 and even Heartbreaker had all been dealt with, either intentionally or not. The Teeth were still at large, although that was mainly because the Butcher was still a pain to put down, and the Fallen were a non-issue after one of their factions were obliterated after attempting to kidnap some Wards. They still existed, but were reduced to the level of nuisance. Oh, and the Endbringers were still destroying stuff every three months, but from what I could tell, the addition of however main high level and heroic Capes in the form of the Sekirei meant that most of the attacks were a little less destructive...sort of. Newfoundland and Kyushu were still sunk and there were far to many domed cities as a result of the Simurgh. Unfortunately, no matter how powerful they were, the Sekirei simply didn't have the power to kill the monsters.
As for the likes of the gangs and Villains in general, it mostly boiled down to the same issues as canon. While the Sekirei were almost inevitably forces for good whenever they did get involved, since they basically ran on good feelings, the addition of one or two more Heroes just wasn't enough and Villains were either broken out or broke out themselves when they were arrested. That said, there was one major difference. Brockton Bay wasn't quite the shithole it was in Canon. Oh, the gangs were still a problem, but the addition of the Hannaya of the North scaring everyone enough that they weren't willing to starts fights in her territory, Homura acting as an independent hero and the Lightning Twins keeping the gangs mostly honest in the area around the DWU facility, they had far less of a grip on the city. Plus, Piggot hadn't been injured nearly as badly in this world thanks to the intervention of the Discipline Squad, meaning that she was both in much better health and a lot less antagonistic towards Capes in general, allowing her to be much more effective at keeping a lid on things. It wasn't perfect, but the city at least wasn't on the verge of collapse. It also meant that the Merchants weren't quite as much of a problem due to there being less desperate people to pray on.
To be honest, I was a little curious as to whether or not the Cauldron was still running their little experiment here, if at all, considering that potentially annoying someone like Miya seemed like a recipe for disaster. Especially after I found the video of what she did the the Siberian. Not Manton, the actual projection. I have no idea how, but she somehow carved up a projection thats supposed to be indestructible like roast turkey, killing Manton with the backlash in the process. She also managed to kill Crawler by slicing him in half and destroying his Core, but considering that she could do that to battleships, it honestly wasn't that impressive.
"Miya, can I just say that you are extremely scary," I said bluntly, making sure not to swear because Riley was helping Miya with the laundry.
Incidentally, do you have any idea how weird it was to see Bonesaw helping with chores while dressed as a Wagtail? Apparently she'd be taking Kus role of adorably adorable kid for this tale, assuming of course that Ku wasn't adorably adorable herself. I hope not, I don't need the cavities from the inevitable sweetness.
"I'm sure I don't know what you mean," said Miya with a sweet smile, "I'm just a perfectly ordinary Landlady."
"Sure, whatever you say," I said.
At that moment, the doorbell rang, followed by the sound of socked feet on the wooden floor as Tess answered it. A moment later, she entered the room with a large grin on her face and a box in her hands.
"Whats that?" I asked.
"Oh, just a little something I asked a friend to whip up," she said, setting the box down on the table.
She opened it to reveal what looked like a male version of the Discipline Squad uniform with the addition of a face mask like Homura wore and a black longcoat instead of the gray haori.
"Whats this for?" I asked.
"You," said Tess.
"I beg your pardon?"
"Oh, don't pretend like you're not planning to go out," she said, "Even if you weren't a Cape, Taylor is definitely the type to use her powers to help and your the type of Ashikabi who won't stay on the sidelines. With this, you'll have a strong base for creating your gear and will be less likely to get killed by a lucky shot."
"Well, when you put it like that…" I said.
"Don't use up all your energy now," said Miya, "Once I'm done with this, we'll get you trained."
"Oh goodie," I muttered as I picked up the coat and started considering what I wanted for my gear.
And you know what? I'm going to end this here. Sure, its a little shorter than I'd like, but its not a bad place to end and I'm not actually 100% sure what I'm going to do with his gear yet.
So, moving onto some points, lets start with Taylor. While her confidence is still rock bottom thanks to the Bitches Three and she is still similar enough to be immediately identified by someone who knows their Worm, the fact shes a Sekirei inevitably means that she'll be a bombshell once she grows up. As for her jacket, most Sekirei seem to wear something with their number on it when in casual clothes. Why is Taylor 77? No idea.
I really hope my reasoning for why she never fought back made sense. Basically, since she doesn't know that Sophias fucked up in the head, she came to the logical conclusion that beating the crap out of her bullies would do nothing but get her in trouble. Plus, there were a lot more of them than her and, before being Winged, Sophia was naturally stronger than her.
Sophia snapping might have seemed to come out of nowhere, but I think it makes sense. A mix of super strength induced confidence and the fact that Taylors still on a bit of a high from finding her Ashikabi resulted in her 'pray' not acting like she was supposed to, combined with the realization that she could have fought back whenever she wanted but didn't bother because she didn't want the hassle of dealing with the fallout caused Sophia's world to crumble and she snapped.
I think it makes sense that the PRT would keep an eye on the internet for any potential information leaks and it probably took about three seconds for fifty people to post the video of an unmasked Shadow Stalker attacking another student. Assault and Battery happened to be the closest on patrol, so they were sent to get a lid on things.
Yes, Assault is a Sekirei and Battery is his Ashikabi.
A quick glimpse at how the world has been affected by the addition of Sekirei. Basically, its better in some ways, much the same in others for much the same reason that the DC and Marvel worlds still have problems, despite having God-like protectors.
Still not sure what I'm going to do with the Cauldron, but I doubt they're actually involved in Brockton this time. Mainly because the Path to Victory probably threw up a 404 error when pointed at Miya (that was a joke incidentally).
Yes, I'm giving Riley Ku's role of hanging around in cute costumes from Uzume. Why? Because we need an adorably adorable blonde around and Ku isn't available!
I like the look of the Discipline Squads uniform and I imagine its made of some sturdy stuff, so why not? Suggestions for Enchantments welcome.
Anyway, this is done now, so I'm gonna sign out. Don't forget to leave a review!