by Louis IX
Check first chapter for disclaimer and global warnings.
Dust to DustStress can be good. You need stress to push yourself beyond your limits. It grants you improvement and insight of further goals to attain.
Stress can be bad, too. Because not everyone reacts well to stress, especially when it's unwanted, and from someone you dislike.
Taylor was quite stressed, these days. The gaslighting campaign, running parallel to the bullying and other letdowns, had ensured that she couldn't trust anyone, about anything. Even herself.
At the beginning, it had been simple things, like a misplaced textbook or sandwich. But she quickly realized that whatever was happening to her, wasn't limited to school: it followed her in her travels out of the institution of learning (if it could even be called that), whether she took the bus or went on foot, whether it was in the street or in shops… and even at home. She got bruised toes and knees when tripping on displaced furniture in her own bedroom, at night. She really thought she was haunted, only for innocent comments from Emma to stab at her, again and again.
About her father being let down, left in the dust after some judges outlawed the whole Dockworkers' Union, decades after the Boat Graveyard debacle… and heading towards drunken misery.
About her gangly and gauche body, always stumbling and fumbling… and falling at the slightest shove. About her being lower than the ground on which she fell regularly, afterwards, nose in the dust – when it wasn't in some conveniently-placed foul-smelling matter.
About her mom being dead and buried in a closed-coffin funeral. Those were the worst and ended up with her fleeing the school in tears. And then the haunting would continue, things happening around her when she wasn't looking.
In fact, after a particularly vicious barb about her mother, she sought refuge in a church. She couldn't stay long, because the vicar thought she was a homeless bum and ushered her outside. The small amount of time was peaceful, though, even if she spent most of it watching the dust motes floating in the slanted rays of sunlight coming from the overhead windows.
The next day, the church took fire, starting right under the place Taylor was sitting, waiting for the mass – she had never been a particularly religious person, but she had thought herself protected, there. She had even studied the day's Scripture – ironically (or not), part of it had been about a burial, where people often said "ashes to ashes, dust to dust".
Stress is like pressure: you can only stand it for a while before needing an outlet. And Taylor had been denied an outlet, because of a sadist ex-friend who knew all her secrets (including where she lived), and because Emma's new best friend was an equally sadist nemesis who could pass through walls – not that she Taylor herself had realized that: even if she had seen Sophia in the act, it had never been in plain light, and her mind was already falling into insanity, bit by bit.
And when enough pressure is applied, things… explode. Despite having seen such an accident in the chemistry lab, when one of the cookers exploded, Emma didn't think that it could apply to human beings.
Well, you know, it's Earth Bet, here. When people explode, it's often quite literal. And not always fiery.
Pushed down, trying to hide into herself while protecting herself from the physical blows at the same time, Taylor Hebert attracted the attention of the power-granting alien shards orbiting the world. She "triggered", connecting to one of them and becoming a parahuman, and gained some abilities in relation with the situation.
She wanted to resist the kicks (and females heels are pointy) and her body solidified, becoming hard as stone. And then, because she was also mentally stressed to the point of explosion (and beyond), she did. And packed atoms, such as stone and ice, can be particularly damaging when they explode.
The whole room was obliterated, the people closest to Ground Zero transformed into bloody pulp – it meant Emma and most of her hangers-on. The desks ended up in splinters and torn metal. Even the walls, meagre plaster as they were, ended up pushed by the shockwave, crashing into the rooms and corridors beyond.
Sophia was spared the worst, but it was only because she had been in the process of going through the wall behind Taylor to shake her some more. The shockwave still pushed her backwards, though, and she ended up going through the other wall further back, before transforming back due to the shock… and finding herself surrounded by those white boys she never wanted to associate with. And the smell of marijuana.
Some of them were quick to act, though. Even with her recent induction into the Wards, Shadow Stalker was a known (and hated) entity in Empire circles, and two of the strongest jocks got to her before she could get her bearings right. Racist fucks as they were, a bit stoned, short-wired due to the explosion, and with a hateful enemy in front of them, they didn't spare two thoughts to what they wanted done: one clocked her with an uppercut which started below the ribcage and travelled up, breaking bone and crushing important organs on the way (such as, say, a heart – an organ that she didn't use that often anyways). Sophia suffered all this because she hadn't been lifted by the initial impact: the other Nazi wannabe had slammed both fists, from behind, on the top of her head, cracking skull and vertebrae alike.
She fell down like a dead puppet whose strings were suddenly cut, damaging her abused body even more. But given the chaos that was happening due to the explosion, few people thought about her case as anything else than one of the collateral victims.
Like her, many students didn't return home, that day. Taylor being one of them, her father lost all restraint and ended up drinking himself to an early grave.
Due to a Ward's death, the PRT still spent some time and money to investigate the explosion. Due to the recent trigger of a trigger-happy bomb Tinker (cape name Bakuda), said Tinker was quickly found and interrogated.
It was revealed that she hadn't done that. It was also revealed that she had done other things. Like implanting bombs into people's head, for instances. Measures were taken to take her out quickly, measures that Oni Lee objected strenuously about. However, the teleporter already had difficulties tying his shoelaces due to the mental trauma of duplicating himself incorrectly, again and again, and he ended up forgetting how to breathe. Besides that, suddenly having his previous body's ashes flown into his own gaping mouth made for additional respiratory difficulties.
He wasn't the only one with those. After the explosion at Winslow, the local practitioners and hospitals saw an increase of breathing troubles. It was as if a dust cloud had settled upon the damaged school, going thicker (and smaller) by the day, and barely moved by the wind.
Equally strange was the fact that people, when they were provided with respiratory filters and forced to go there to study (because there weren't enough places in other schools to welcome the remaining students), removed the masks as soon as they were in the school proper.
People thought that it was because the students there were rebellious teenagers preferring to take risks with their health instead of following doctors' advices. Go figures. Of course, they went back to the doctors soon afterwards, some coughing blood among the ever-present dust. But teachers did, too, with worse symptoms. The worse was Blackwell, who sat down one morning and suffocated the whole day without moving, only to die as the day ended.
Thankfully, summer vacation was nearby, and the building could be properly closed… and cleaned, vented, and investigated. Tests were done. Thinkers were called upon. Post-cogs, especially – those able to see in the past. Taylor's trigger was revealed, as well as the bullying that led to it.
Instead of accepting part of the blame, however (because of Sophia's involvement and flouting of the Unwritten Rules), the PRT chose to do like every government since time immemorial: cover their ass. They stopped at "killed many children with a parahuman power, including a Ward" and asked for a Kill Order when it was ascertained that Taylor was still alive, even if barely conscious. As a slowly-coalescing dust cloud.
The girl may not have been conscious yet, but she felt some danger at staying there, so she allowed the wind to carry her away – apparently, she could anchor parts of her cloud to other parts, and she switched from the "anchoring to the dust on the ground" to the reverse, floating the whole cloud away.
She started by visiting the cemetery, where she thought she could lay for a bit next to her mother's grave. She found her father's there already, as well as many heroes standing around, watching the cloud warily, waiting for her to move again.
So, instead of regrouping, she allowed herself to relax completely, becoming a completely innocent (and quite wide) cloud of microscopic particles floating in the wind.
Since it blew inland, at that time, she found herself regrouping in a big place with high walls all around it and few signs of life inside. It was Ellisburg.
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Anti-Hero MatterStarting with a thin layer of dust, barely making it look as if the town was (only a little bit) more abandoned than it already was, she continued to gather matter, and coalesce it into a living body… if you could say that about a stone statue of a healthy girl – she had aggregated the dust from everywhere, and had more mass than she knew what to do with: already two meters tall, she still had more dust floating and laying around.
Nilbog knew something was there, once she started regrouping, and he ordered her brought to him – or, rather, to his body double: thinking himself clever, the man had buried his real body, only connecting himself to the exterior through a few tubes around the house his "double" lived in. That security made him think himself quite protected. And it was the case… normally.
After he taunted her one time too many, promising death by a thousand hungry mouths, she exploded again. She ended up killing most of the creatures there, razing the house, and shredding his real body's life support. Nilbog died without the possibility of exerting his power again, because he was crushed in the mass of earth he had wanted to shield himself with.
And the cloud of dust resulting from the explosion seemed to acquire more control after a while, moving opposite to the wind in some cases… such as when it actively pursued Nilbog's remaining creatures. It extended towards them, around them, and ended up controlling them like it did the "innocent" students of Winslow. One after the other, the abominations were mastered and made to kill each other, before the last remaining ones were asphyxiated.
In fact, the thickest the cloud (meaning a smaller one, and less targets), the stronger the control was: by covering the last beast with a layer of dust so thick that it resembled a round wall, Taylor was able to exert her will in a manner that had it kill itself. Normally, it's an act against any living creature's instincts. But in the case of the rhinoceros-like creature, it wasn't really so: the beast rammed its massive body head-first against the city's enclosure. Repeatedly. It had already done so, in fact. Except, this time, it didn't stop.
And then, to clean the place of any remaining organism, Taylor got her cloud to move like a sandstorm, scourging the whole area of anything that was alive or had been so. And then she left too.
A few weeks after that, the cloud was still hanging on the North American landmass, and some decisions had been taken, leading the Triumvirate to head towards the area Taylor was currently inhabiting – the infamous "Area 51".
In that time, Taylor had gathered her wits. She had realized that she was now a parahuman, and had worked her powers for a while, "flexing" them to get the hang of them. She was now more conscious of her environment, even in cloud shape.
She had also fully realized that she was an orphan, leading to her lashing out at her surroundings quite regularly – which is why she chose a desert, incidentally.
She had not realized, though, that Sophia had been a Ward, and that the Protectorate was gunning for her. In her mind, Alexandria was a hero, same as Legend, Eidolon, Armsmaster, and Miss Militia.
That's why, upon perceiving them (and many others) approaching, she shaped her cloud into a multi-stories high semblance of the woman-in-charge, and saluted her.
Some thought that it was a mockery, or an attack, and retaliated immediately. Lasers pierced the cloud, followed by bullets, arrows and bolts, and grenades… and then Brutes. Including said Alexandria, leading the charge spearing through her "body".
Lasers heated the particles, but her double-Breaker form (stone and then dust cloud) didn't suffer much from it. Besides, she could always shuffle them around, or gain more from the ground – she had gained mass on her travels, and she would be able to shed most of the cloud, if she wanted.
As for the many projectiles, they continued on their way and rained down the next cities around. Thank you, heroes.
The grenades exploding inside the cloud shuffled parts of it, but she didn't need feet for balance, and the burn wasn't even on par with lasers.
Eidolon was flying, as was often the case. For this fight, he had opted for black hole attacks. Merlin, another hero, used gravity attacks too although they acted slower and were less destructive. Merlin's attack compressed the dust, actually helping Taylor when she wanted to punch an enemy or ten. Eidolon's destroyed parts of her, but she took more from the surrounding desert, healing herself… and gaining a few singularities – black holes compress matter into a tiny point; Eidolons version did the same before stopping, creating particles so fine despite their weight that they passed through anything, following the gravity around them. Except in a cloud where each particle was managed by a single mind.
Some of the Brutes did have a bit of impact, their blows producing shockwaves that dissipated her cloud slightly, and temporarily. Seeing that she didn't retaliate, they even engaged a few squishies in close contact, to test a few exotic powers.
Clockblocker discovered that his power immobilized only the particles he touched… and found himself held by the many particles already touching his body when he activated his power. Immune to his own power, he had to breathe, though, and found that quite difficult with the many grains held in place against his body.
Vista tried her usual shtick, but she was quickly evacuated because it simply didn't work: it required the space manipulated to lack presence, and Taylor's cloud was everywhere – there was a shape that was visible, but particles hanged around the main thing, mostly invisible. That's why Clockblocker was covered before he thought he could touch his foe.
But when heroes engage an enemy like that, even one who thought them good and wise, said enemy ends up retaliating. And most of the members of the invading force found themselves trapped in a sandstorm, soon unable to see, and unable to breathe. And those who still resisted found themselves with one of Eidolon's little gifts entering a nose or an ear, and retrieving their original shape quite explosively.
And in the howling of the sandstorm that was slowly eroding the corpses of the failed heroes, the fleeing survivors could swear they heard the wind whine "WHY?"
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An End BroughtIn the years that ensued, people in Nevada first, then the whole country, learned to live with a cloud of dust that could kill them if they provoked it. And if not, it settled to "rest" for a while, making the area look like an old and abandoned site.
The people learned to accept that, one day, their whole city could be covered in dust, a "presence" in the air looking around like a tourist would, before leaving a few days later.
It even took more dust with it as it left, leaving the place even neater. And not just literally: in the time of her visit, the cloud that was a girl who imagined herself a hero… took a few more lives, a few bad apples who turned up dead, most of them suffocating to death. Known villains or people who she witnessed acting criminally, or both, it didn't change a thing for her.
Until the Endbringers.
Leviathan came when she was visiting her home town. His water washed her dust, but she was still in control of the particles, and torrents of mud converged on the massive Endbringer, lifted it, and brought it back in the middle of the nearest desert. It was an Endbringer, and succeeded in lifting the nearest aquifer and transform it into something that would later be fertile grounds. But it took enormous amounts of energy, and the creature was visibly diminished. And Taylor brought it to another desert.
She ended up dropping a desiccated Endbringer in the middle of the Sahara… where it struck Ash Beast upon falling, the two of them exploding into a blast that vitrified the sand, miles around them. It included a part of Taylor's cloud… and she learned how to manipulate small particles of glass (in addition to dust and sand).
Apparently, when an Enbringer died, they left something that looked like a jewel, behind them. And it attracted attention: Moord Nag's power, a projection manifested as a humongous black snake, was seen approaching quickly. And another massive creature was making irruption upon the scene… from below.
Behemoth had come.
Too late to save its brother, it still seemed to want to collect the jewel. To gain its power, perhaps? Not wanting an Endbringer able to control both Earth and Water, Taylor tried to push Behemoth back. Doing so brought her in closer contact with both the Endbringer and the jewel. Apparently, that contact was enough to bring her the ability of manipulating particles of water, whether they were close to each other (in liquid form) or not (such as mist, fog… or ice).
But there wasn't much water around. With Behemoth and Aasdier both converging on her, Taylor backed towards the shore, continuing the battle to keep them occupied – and with each other, too: Behemoth's aura indisposed the black snake and its mistress, and the many attacks from the serpent provoked the Endbringer's ire many times over.
With only a mile to go (it was more like 1.618 kilometre, for some reason), Taylor felt her control of water asserts itself on the nearest large body of water… which was the ocean. Bringing the water created the equivalent of two typhoons, one for the Endbringer and the other for Moord Nag – whose snake had lost most of its mass in the on-going fight, and, contrarily to its usual instincts, it couldn't leave to fetch human lives to feed on, because of the dual threat in front of it (and because the closest group of humans was too far).
Taylor quickly manifested ice in the cyclonic torrent of water, and the remains of the African warlady and her companion were quickly shredded to nothingness.
Behemoth remained, but already singularly beaten, and with the new impossibility to return to the Earth because of an expanding layer of ice between its feet and the ground. The ice led the unwieldy beast down a slope leading to the coast… and beyond. Separated from is element, and held by a mistress of Water, Behemoth was slowly but methodically gnawed upon by the hungry currents until it yielded the diamond of Earth mastery.
Taylor could already master a large dust cloud, healing herself by taking dust and sand from the ground. With this already done, the powers adapted and gave her the power of manipulation gravitation forces inside her area of effect. While, before, she had had to insert ice to lift Behemoth up, she could now do the same by reverting the pull of gravity on its body. Shame it died, really.
Another Endbringer was still alive and kicking, though. And doing so quite angrily, too… contrarily to what had been her habit before – apparently, and given their recent changes in behaviours, the Endbringers had been linked to Eidolon: when he died, they had started moving around aimlessly, sometimes attacking at random, other times just "visiting". All this with no schedule, and no reservation about being seen with each other. As a family. As children who had lost their progenitor.
And the last "enfant terrible" of the trio was making her anger known by telekinetically striking at Taylor's underwater "body" lifting it up with hard-to-resist pull. Not seeing a reason not to, the girl-turned-cloud added her own gravitational pull to speed up her move upwards, drenching the Simurgh quite thoroughly. And more.
On the ocean floor had been resting the result of decades of maritime travels: oil spills had slowly sunk, coating the area in black tar where few things could live. And Taylor had brought it all up with her. After her pass, Ziz was wet. At the end of it, she was also coated in wet tar. And pulled upwards too.
As long as she was in Taylor's area, she was subject to changes in gravity. And such changes led her slowly towards the nearest recycling plant: the Sun. Taylor had to expand much of her mass, into gravitationally-created singularities, to push the last Endbringer towards her death… and succeed in grabbing the ruby that was briefly exposed just as the Simurgh finally succumbed to the star's own pull.
The Endbringer-ender could already fly, and didn't need to breathe. Mastery of Air transformed into mastery of Fire, the last element (in the alchemical definition of the universe, for some).
At least, with this, she could live peacefully on the surface of the star celestial body of the Solar System.
After all, she didn't care much about the Earth: all the people she had ever admired being dead and (mostly) buried. She still returned, from time to time, to lay besides her parents' grave. Using Earth, she gave them a beautiful monument, with an everlasting flame in the middle.
The Fallen ambushed her there, trying to use the two bodies to make her follow their lead (in what they thought was an appropriate response to their idols' demise at her hands). She removed their air and water in response, creating dry husks that burned quickly afterwards. And from their ashes, she built a stone house around the place her parents' grave had stood – a church. One where no one would clean the dust, allowing it to accumulate. One where, when people would chant "dust to dust", it would be with a renewed faith… and a fearful glance towards the corners of the building, where said dust kept itself, unmoving.
Most of the time.
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To be continued… if it could arise from the dust binAuthor's Notes: I re-read the "Dead Meat" chapter (currently numbered 28)… after writing this. Some plot bunnies are tenacious enough to resurrect themselves and keep on biting. Still, there should be enough differences for this one to be posted on its own.