Day 2.2

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Starfield

Taylor shrank back into her chair as the yelling began. Girls wearing her face yelling at each other as they tried to take control of the situation.

Actually it was the Techno Queen who tried to take control of thing. She was, unsurprisingly, the loudest and the first to spring up from her seat after Grue delivered his message. She shouted out demands that frankly surprised Taylor.

She wasn't surprised that they were being given, at least not entirely. No, instead it was what the Tinker was demanding the surprised her. The flamboyant girl was demanding information, the wheres and whens of things. After that the Queen started to live up the her name as she began to give out orders.

Orders Skitter took exception to. Her protest born from the simple fact that the Techno Queen did not belong there, that none of the other Taylors did. There were on Skitter's world, intruding on her life.

And Skitter was right, Taylor didn't belong there.

She knew that, more than anything else at that moment Taylor knew that. She could feel it with every wayward gaze the local world's Danny Hebert gave her. It hurt, just a bit, every time he looked at her. How he quickly looked away from her when he realized that she wasn't truly his Taylor, despite how she had vented to him the night before.

At least their talk seemed to make him want to better by his real daughter, his real Taylor. Enough for him stand between the two warring girls and yell over their voices, "Taylor... Both of you! You need to calm down!"

But while his voice carried weight enough to cause a temporary ceasefire in their argument it was not his voice who truly quieted them. Instead it was the quiet, almost unheard, voice of Marceau that seemed to reach them.

"Both of you need to take a step back, we don't have time to with all this arguing." Her voice had a surprising strength to it despite its lack of volume, "We need to handle this, preferably without blowing Skitter's identity while we're at it. And we can't do that while we're arguing over who can say and do what. For now I vote that we leave that to Grue, he's the leader of the Undersiders here isn't he?"

While Marceau gave Techno Queen a hard look, one that received a half protest from its target, Taylor noticed Grue straighten up just a bit from where he stood. A second late he took a step forward, separating Skitter from the Techno Queen all the more with the action, "I have no objections to that, and you did come up with some good points Techno Queen. Ones that'll I see about following through on while the rest of you get into costume. We need to cut this off at its head before the heroes and PRT decide to take off the kid gloves."

"It's THE TECHNO QUEEN." The Tinker muttered before nodding her head, "I'm going to need my ray gun back if I'm going to any help in a fight."

"It's in my jacket by the door," Grue said, pulling out his phone as he waved the girl towards the door. "Tattletale vetted you last night and I figured I'd bring it along just in case."

"No matter the world Grue is always prepared!" Techno Queen Proclaimed as she rushed towards the door to retrieve her weapon.

"The rest of you get ready, we need to act fast if we want to recover from this mess."

-0-0-0-0-0-

As the bathroom door closed behind her Taylor let out a small breath of relief. Being around her other selves was... stifling to the very least. Even when the weren't fighting.

Shrugging away those emotions to the side Taylor pulled out her borrowed knife and began to work on her face. Carefully cutting away at the flesh around her face she began to reveal the swirling mess of stars that laid of the other side. Once the circular flap of skin that was her face was cut away Aria happily wiggled one of her tentacles out to help Taylor cut into the more tricky places.

"Taylor? Are you well?" Melody asked, always the sensitive and attentive one. Taylor half blamed it on her friend's empathetic abilities, the other half she blames on her friend's big heart.

"I'm fine," She half lied. "Things are just so... Weird right now." Taylor rolled her shoulder as one of Melody's wings spring free from the gap in her skin and continued to speak. "Things are just happening so fast and I feel like I'm barely keeping up. The others all seem to know what they're doing or what they should do and all I did was sit there..."

"Is that not to be expected?" Melody asked as she assisted Taylor with freeing her other wing, "If what the others have said is to be believed then they have been active in the field, as it were, while you have only a little more than a month's worth of experience."

"I guess, but it's still, I don't know, discouraging" Taylor confessed as she near absently took the knife from Aria and started to create slits along her fingertips, allowing Melody to extend her talons through the openings. "It makes me feel like I should be doing more, be more."

"If it is of any consolation to you the others are not taking this situation any better than you are. Worse in at least one case," Melody said, making Taylor perk up just a bit in response. "All of them taste of stress but both the Queen and Marceau are exuding feelings of despair and loss, much more so for the latter. Skitter is a cluster of anger, stress and worry. It certainly does not help matters that she is pouring a great dealing of longing at the one called Grue, who barely returns the attraction."

Melody's words didn't exactly make her feel any better but at least she now knew that the others were feeling as off put over the situation as she was. And maybe that could be enough.

Enough for her to gather what meager courage she could and go out to meet the villains she was being forced to working with. A disquieting thing even if they were herself.

Grue was the first to notice her descending the stairs, or so she guessed from the strangled sound she heard him he make in the back of his throat. The others gave the leather clad boy a curious glance before following his line of sight to stare directly at her.

It was eerie to hear such similar sounds of surprise from so many different angles.

"How does that even work? How does she even see?" The Techno Queen asked out loud with the sound of disturbed wonder in her voice.

"Th-That's not important right now," Skitter declared, trying to recover her composure as quickly as she could. "We need to figure out how we're going to get to the others. We don't have Bitch's dogs to get to them"

Grue was silent for a moment, adjusting his gloves in what Taylor could only guess was a nervous habit. Then he stared at her, "Starfield, how many people can you carry at one time?"

"I, uh, don't know." Taylor said, feeling put on the spot. "Maybe one or two?"

"So we can't have you fly us there then," Grue mumbled before cursing under his breath. "Guess we're going to have to jack a car from the street... probably better to get one from a block down..."

"No, you can't do that. Those people need their cars." Danny said as stood from the table. "If you need a car, take mine."

"We can't do that Mr. Hebert," Grue said with a shake of his head. "We can't risk having this tracked back to Taylor."

"I'll just report it stolen after you leave, I'll call the police a few minutes after you leave and say I woke up with it gone, but I'm not letting you steal a car from this neighborhood."

The two men had a brief standoff before Grue sagged his shoulders and let out a sigh. "Fine but I'm hot wiring the car to make it look like a robbery."

"Fine."

"Good." After that had been settled Grue turned back to Taylor, "Starfield, I want you to fly on ahead with Skitter and help out the others, get them out there or hold things off long enough for us to get there."

"Are you sure this is a good idea?" Skitter asked, her head taking a nervous turn towards Taylor.

"Best we have right now and we don't have much time to think of a better one. We need to get someone there fast and last time I check you couldn't drive." Taylor could practically feel the unseen message that she nor the other two Taylors could be left alone hidden in his words. "Besides, you pack a bigger punch than I do in a fight."

"I... alright, fine. Where do we go?" Once she got the address from Grue Skitter turned towards Taylor, let out a breath, and started walking towards the backdoor. "C'mon, let's go."

"Good Luck!" Techno Queen yelled out as they left the room with a near mumble of well wishes from the others as they passed.

-0-0-0-0-0-

Skitter

As she was carried across the skies of Brockton Bay Taylor did her best not to feel absolutely terrified. Despite the height Taylor was near absolutely sure she was not going to fell to her death but how she knew that terrified her, and it did so on so many different levels.

Starfield, who was apparently the youngest of the Taylors, had cut into her own abdomen and let loose a number of tentacles to hold Taylor secure as they flew. The fact that the almost green tentacles would occasionally spout an eye or a mouth did not help matters. Neither did that maddening sound Starfield made when she was talking to her alien friends.

To distract herself Taylor reached out to the bugs below and gave each passing of them a simple command, 'Follow'. Every time she felt something enter her control she would repeat that simple order over and over again until, after the first handful of blocks, a sizable swarm began to form behind them.

It was something that people began to take notice of, including the girl holding Taylor up in the air.

"Whoa, that's a lot of bugs."

Taylor gave her a nod and wondered why the other girl's voice had to be so creepy. "I figured that if we're going to get into a fight I should grab as many as I could on our way there."

"That makes sense..." She said with a far off tone that sent chills down Taylor's spine. "But hopefully we won't have to fight when we get there."

Taylor nearly snorted.

"That other me, us, whatever, was throwing bombs around. Of course there is going to be a fight!" Taylor said, barely noticing how her voice was growing in volume or her the bugs passing her by became agitated with her. "We've already dealt with one bombing maniac already and my city doesn't need another one. If the Heroes and PRT aren't already there then the villains are sure to show up to deal with her on their own!"

"Oh..."

Their flight became temporarily filled in an awkward silence with the exception of Taylor's ragged breaths and the squirming sounds of Starfield's tentacles. It had lasted a bare half minute before they reached their target and the silence was filled with the deafening sounds of barking.

-0-0-0-0-0-

The scene that the two Taylor's came upon wasn't what either of them had expected. They certainly had expected the overturned cars and even the new craters that littered the streets, but they did not expect for the rest of the scene to look like a third grader's art project.

Foam and paint coated the area sporadically in twisting designs, catching everything from PRT troopers to Bitch's dogs in their clutch's. The foam Taylor could have expected but the paint was just out of the ordinary. It was a thick multicolored goop that adhered a number of PRT troopers to the pavement... what was left of the pavement.

But what had to be the strangest thing on the street was the giant ball and chain that was foamed to a wall. It was literally trying to eat its way through foam with its cartoonish maw to free itself and one of Bitch's monstrous dogs from where it was suck to the wall. Taylor did her best not to spend too much time wondering what the creature was or where the rest of Bitch's dogs were, instead her eyes found the source of the mess.

The giddy and giggling source of destruction that had decided to make her life all the harder.

Looking at the source of her woes Taylor found a girl in a red hoodie wearing a hockey mask, and Taylor could already see the similarities between the two of them. From their height to the long and curly brown hair that flew behind her as the red-hooded girl charged towards some of the remaining Troopers, Taylor could see herself in this other girl.

The girl had let out a mighty "RAAWWW!" as she jumped into the air and swung that bat in her hand at a flinching Trooper. To the man's credit he did react, raising his arms up in time to nearly block the incoming blow, but then his arms twitched out of the way of the bat.

That was a good sign, it meant Regent was still somewhere around there and up to his usual trucks, too bad it didn't help the other Taylor too much with the rest of the Troopers. Their grips and aims faltered under Regent's efforts but there were more than enough of them had their weapons aimed in the right direction.

Luckily there were more than enough bugs on the scene for her to fix that. Sure the attacks consisted mostly of bugs up the nose and ears but it was more than enough to distract the Troopers for the other Taylor to do her thing.

"Is she one of us?" Starfield asked, her wings spreading wide as she slowed their approach.

"I think so." Taylor said before pointing towards an overturned car. "Land over there, Tattletale's there."

"Okay."

Taylor landed first, placed gently on the ground by too long tentacles from meters up in the air, and quickly made her way over to where Tattletale was hunkering down.

"Tattletale!"

"Skitt..." Lisa's voice started to trail off as her eyes fell behind Taylor's shoulder.

"Tattletale? Tattletale? What's wrong?" Glancing behind her Taylor saw Starfiled approaching them in a light jog, her wings held close to her so she was less noticeable. But it was the other girl's star filled opening that used to be her face that got Taylor's attention.

If Starfield's power gave Taylor a headache she couldn't even imagine what it did to someone with Tattletale's abilities. But they didn't have time for her to dazed and out of action, Lisa needed to snap out of what ever funk she was going through.

"Tattletale" Taylor shouted as she shook her friend's shoulder, "Tattletale, snap out of it. We need you to get out of this! Where's Bitch and Regent?"

"Bi-Bitch? She's, she's..." Lisa's voice stuttered and trailed but she eventually managed to force her words free, "She's over there, by the grocery store. She and Angelica got sprayed by the trucks early on in the fight. Brutus and Judas were still in the fight with that giant ball thing for a while but without Bitch there to direct them the PRT guys were able to handle them. After that it was just Shy Girl and Regent holding them off."

"Shy girl?"

"That crazy Taylor over there." Tattletale said as she jerked her thumb in the general direction of the on going fight between the still standing Troopers and the laughing girl. "They've already called in reinforcements, did it when they saw us here with her. We have about three more minutes before more show up. Not sure if it's going to be more PRT or the Protectorate yet."

"Fuck" Taylor groaned as she took in that bit of bad news, luckily she felt the good news rapidly approaching, "Well, I got my own reinforcements coming in." She said trying her best to sound more confident than she actually felt, even if the giant approaching swarm was doing wonders for her attitude.

When the first bits of the swarm made it to the street Taylor went on the attack, the angry buzz of her bugs nearly deafening as she ordered them forward. She spread her first cloud of bugs thin as she used them to take full stock of the street.

She counted the Troopers, took note of their positions as they began to circle 'Shy Girl'. She had also used them to find Regent and... "Who's that with Regent?"

"Squealer. Apparently the other you is friends with her, or at least they are on her world. She won't leave without her."

"I, whatever." Taylor really did not want to think about all the differences, for better or worse, there were between her and her alternate selves' lives. That was a headache for another time. "Let's just get out of here, Grue and the others are on their way now but I'd rather be gone before this gets any worse."

"You won't hear me complaining!" Tattletale snapped out in irritation, "It's your stupid alternate! She wouldn't leave without Squealer and then she dragged us into this stupid fight instead of fucking running away! If you want to leave you have to grab her!"

"Great, fine." Taylor mutter as she tangled her hands in her hair, "Starfield? You're strong right? Can you get Bitch and her dogs out of that gunk?"

"I can try..."

"Good, I'm going to try and get that other me, us, whatever." As she said this Taylor began to form arrows of bugs in front of Regent, trying to urge him get up and move. "Tattletale, you'll..."

"I'll stay here."

"You'll stay here."

With that Taylor stood up, barely noticing Starfield racing her way to Bitch's position, and rushed her way over to where Shy Girl was holding off some very persistent PRT may be covered in bugs and low on fire-power, but they were still holding strong and fighting.

Or flailing around rather impressively, it was one of the two. Either way, Shy Girl was going bat-to-dented-foam-thrower with the Troopers, apparently having the time of her life as she pushed them back.

Taylor had no problems interrupting the girl's fun.

A curtain of bugs descended onto the Troopers, causing those brave men and women to let out a startled scream and Shy Girl to rapidly take a handful of steps back.

"Ew, ew, eeewww!"

Ignoring the girls screaming complaints Taylor grabbed her by the arm and tried to pull her away, the key word being tried. The red hooded girl just wouldn't budge, instead she turned her head slightly to look over her shoulder. "Wadya' want?"

"We need to leave, c'mon!" Taylor tried tugging the girl again but her attempt was just as successful as the first time. Instead all her effort did was encourage the other girl to turn fully to face her. The girl looked Taylor over in an almost comical fashion before her whole body seemed to vibrate with excitement.

"You're one of the other me's aren't you? This is so cool!"

"Not the time." Taylor near ground out, "We need to get out of her, now!"

"Fine fine." Shy Girl said with a wave, "Things were starting to get boring here anyway."

"Maybe we could fix that!" A bold and almost boisterous voice yelled from above before an almost obnoxiously large man slammed into the ground in front of them. He was a tall man who had to be bordering seven feet tall and had shoulders large enough that it looked like he could wrestle a bear.

But what had to the strangest thing about the man was the yellow trimmed white body suit he wore.

"I welcome you to the Pelham family patrol!" He said as he cracked his knuckles in anticipation with three bright and glowing figures floating ever closer to their position.