Planning and financing a wedding is hard! Also, fuck Jury Duty!
Day 2.3
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Shy Girl
"Hey! It's the boring half of New Wave!" Taylor said with a wave as she imitated a dear friend. "Hiiiii~"
"The boring half?" An affronted voice said from above.
"Shielder, calm down," Photon Mom said as she descended near her husband's shoulder. "She's just trying to get a rise out of you."
"Yeah, well, it's working."
"Chin up son!" Manpower proclaimed as he rolled his shoulders. "We'll make her take that back in a minute.
Taylor, near completely ignoring their little chat, continued on as if they hadn't said a word. "Since you're the boring half you'll actually listen, right? Unlike these PRT dummies, didn't let me get a word in... dummies. Anyway, I'm a duly deputized bails bonds agent, not completely sure how that works here but eh. And while a fight sound fun there isn't really much of a reason for it."
"Even if that was true, there is still the issue of you attacking Law Enforcement Officers. You'll still need to come in."
"Hey, that's not fair! They attacked me first!" Taylor knew well enough that wasn't a valid excuse when it came to punching cops but she still felt it was something that needed to said.
"Considering that you're surrounded by villains and spent the morning blowing up a chunk of the city, I think they had plenty of reason." Laserdream shouted from above, her hands glowing with power and her arms tense as waited for the fight to start.
"They still started it!" Wait a second... Surrounded by villains? Sure, assuming Rachel was around made sense since her dogs were glued everywhere but the other Undersiders, and Squealer, were out of sight and the only one near her was...
Taylor abruptly turned to face the bug-themed girl next to her and gripped the girl tightly by the shoulders, "Other me! You're a villain!?"
"Kinda? Look, can we talk about this later when a bunch of Capes aren't trying to beat us up?"
Taylor gave the other girl a long and hard stare before releasing her shoulders, "Fine, but we are so talking about this villain thing later."
"Fine, whatever, let's just get out of here!"
"Oh, but you can't leave now!" Manpower said as he rapidly closed the distance between them, "We haven't even gotten started yet!"
The only reason why the girls got away unscathed was at the timely sacrifice of Taylor's bat... She was just starting to like that bat too, it was surprisingly sturdy.
"I'm not going to let you ge-ACK!" Manpower's threat ended with a choke as a thick wave of bugs descended onto him, forcing him to flail about as he tried to swat them away.
"Dad!"
"Shielder, you go help your father! Laserdream, you help me box them in!"
"Got it!/On it mom!"
Taylor, hearing the orders clearly despite the distance, let out the almost meek sounding "Uh oh" before she picked up the other Taylor up princess style and started to run away. PRT agents were one thing but taking on a team of Capes without her Guys was not something she was sure she could handle.
As she ran down the street, hopping out of the way of lasers and sudden hard light obstacles, she started to talk to her alternate. "So, you're doing the bugs?"
"What?" The girl near exclaimed in distracted voice. "I, yeah. Can we talk about this later? Please?"
"Fine, fine." Feeling a bit disappointed Taylor pushed on and continued her routine of running and dodging. It was a tricky thing, trying to not get boxed in or guided into a corner, but Taylor managed it. It actually reminded her of a few puzzle games she played with some of the other Brawlers.
Still annoying though.
"Shit," the Bug Taylor hissed from her arms, "Manpower's on the move again."
Well, that sounded bad.
And sure enough a voice yelled from above them, boldly proclaiming, "Didn't I say you weren't getting away!" as it's owner began to rapidly descend on them. Not some Taylor hadn't had to deal with before a common enough tactic for a number of her sparring partners in fact, but wasn't quite sure the Manpower from her world had ever been quiet so enthusiastic.
Something to check on when she got back home, she supposed.
But as she jumped back to dodge the aerial attack Taylor found her back slamming into something warm. Turning her head back she saw a wall of purple energy blocking her escape. She tried to use the new hard light wall as a springboard but mid-leap Manpower was suddenly in front of her and punched her hard enough enough she could swear she heard something crunch.
She really hoped it wasn't her nose again.
Before she could respond, curse, or even think of jumping away, walls of blue and red joined the purple effectively trapping her in a multicolored pyramid.
Definitely not good. She really should have given the boring half of New Wave more credit.
"Heh, not as quick footed as you thought you were huh?" Manpower asked with a grin, tapping at the makeshift prison as he did.
"Manpower, now's not the time for gloating." Lady Photon chided with the sound of fond exasperation leaking into her voice, "Go try and corral the other villains, but stay in our line of sight so we can offer some long range support. I'll send Laserdream after you once Shielder and I have contained Skitter and the Brute. Also try to see if any of the PRT agents have any foam grenades they didn't waste on the street."
"On it, honey!" He was bounding his way down the street before Taylor could even shake all the stars out from her eyes.
"Are you okay?" The Bug Taylor asked as she crouched down next to her. She must have fallen out of her arms when Manpower punched her.
"I'mfine." Taylor said with a bit of a huff, happy to hear that her voice didn't have that muffled quality that came with a broken nose. Looking up she could she the red wall of light steady receding as the blue and purple ones began to take its place. It'd probably be a good idea to attack before they were done with that.
With a flip from the ground Taylor launched herself into the air and towards the ever shrinking wall of red, "Aaaaaah!". Her fist struck with a solid thunk, completely disputing the wall of energy that was once there.
Unfortunately the blue wall had near instantly taken the red's place, leaving Taylor to fall flat on her back instead of toward freedom. "Not going to happen," she heard from above, soon followed by another gloat of "And that's not going to work either Skitter!"
Looking towards the glowing blue boy she could see that he, and his mother, had covered themselves in force fields stopping the large swarm of bugs from attacking them. Annoying.
If she had her Guys with here they wouldn't be acting so damn smug... Speaking of which, how much longer were they going to be.
*Another day at the least, boss. Just try to hang in there a bit longer.*
Taylor let out a tsk and a grunt as she pulled herself up from the ground. It didn't seem like she was going to get any help that way anytime soon, so it was up to her to get herself out of the mess.
"Bug me! Can you do anything else with your bugs?"
"Not if I can't get to them, and Laserdream is making sure I can't get her or her dad."
"Great..." Taylor started to go over her options in her head. She knew Shielder's and Photon Mom's shields were better than Laserdream's, so they weren't just going to break from one of her punches. It would take a while lot of punches at the very least but she just didn't have the time for that. She still had some Bob-ombs but she didn't think that Bug Taylor was as durable as she was.
"How good are you with explosions?"
The Bug Taylor just stared at her for a moment, one that felt very long and quiet, before she answered in a hesitant voice. "Not very good..."
"Well, can't do that then..." But as she began to think about her other options Taylor hear a terrified scream. Looking up she could see Laserdream rapidly flying away from a winged cape.
"The fuck is it's face!" Laserdream yelled even as a wave of slithering tentacles sprung from the winged cape and wrapped themselves around the heroine's ankle. With a mighty tug the other cape tossed the eldest Pelham child at her sibling, the boy's eyes briefly widened before dropping his shield so he didn't hurt his sister as she slammed into him.
An impact hard enough to force the boy to drop his field and allowed both Taylors to jump towards freedom. As Lady Photon went to check on her children the winged cape landed near them and Taylor's mind briefly shut down as she stared into the void of stars staring back at her.
"So, pretty..."
"Are you guys okay?"
Taylor couldn't find it in herself to answer but Bug Taylor obviously wasn't as enraptured as she was. "Yeah, thanks Starfield. How are Bitch and the dogs?"
"Mostly free, Bitch didn't want my help anymore after I got her out. Said something about me scaring her dogs."
"Yeah, I can see that," Bug Taylor mumbled, "Okay, once we get Bitch's dogs out we leave. I don't think my bugs are going to distract New Wave for long."
"Okay... Is she alright?"
Bug Taylor and the star faced Cape both turned their attentions towards her and the only response she could muster was a, "Pretty."
"Um, thanks?"
"Now is not the time!" Bug Taylor near yelled as she shook Taylor out of her stupor. "We need to get going, now!"
"Huh, what? I'm good!" Taylor eventually said after a few blinks.
"Then let's go! Starfield, do you think you can hold them off? Make them back off for a bit for us to escape?"
"I... Maybe? I mean, they're heroes. I don't want to hurt them..."
"Then don't, unless you have to. Try to remember they're trying to capture us, hurt us." The other Taylor explained, "I know it doesn't seem right, but-"
"Nippy!" Taylor squealed, interrupting whatever Bug Taylor was going to say, as she saw her lovable Chomping bouncing towards her.
"That thing is yours?"
"Yep! Nippy got stuck in the foam ealy in the fight but now it can help us get away!"
"How?"
"Easy, Nippy?" The cartoonishly toothed steel ball perked up at its name, "Sic em!"
The Chomp let out an excited bark as it rushed towards the swarm of bugs holding back the members of New Wave, "There, that should keep them distracted longer than your bugs."
"And your... Chomp?"
"Nippy can find me later, probably hide in the sewers until I call."
"I... Okay, whatever. Let's just get the others and get out of here. I'll call the others, tell them to meet us at the base."
They could hear Manpower yelling over the sound of barking and buzzing, promising that they wouldn't escape him, but a quick glance backwards showed that the large ball of steel was keeping him busy as his family was rapidly killing swaths of bugs around them.
Still, it looked like they had bought themselves enough time... hopefully. And if they didn't, well, she had a few Bob-ombs ready to help fix the situation.
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In the end they had gotten away easily enough, though two Bob-ombs had to be used to accomplish that task. She felt a little bad for using them but hey, needs were needs and they needed to get away.
And boy did it feel weird to be on the other side of that.
With Squealer still struggling on her shoulder Taylor took a look at the building the Undersiders and the other Taylors had brought her too and, frankly, it was a dump. Or at least the outside and first floor was, the second was actually pretty nice. Like one of those apartments in magazines or TV shows.
"So, where can I put her?" Taylor asked
"Just, toss her in the bathroom for now. We'll figure something else out later," Tattletale said with a wave, massaging her forehead as she moved towards the kitchen.
"I don't see why you even brought her," Bitch growled, coming in with her dogs trailing just behind her.
"She's not that bad once you get to know her," Squealer was actually a pretty funny person, once you got passed all of her cursing.
"I was talking about you."
"Bitch, we've been over this. It's to help Taylor, okay?"
"Whatever," Was all the girl said as she all but stomped down the hall.
Tattletale let out a sigh. "Just follow her down the hall, the bathroom's the second door on the right."
"Thanks." Following Tattletale's directions Taylor soon deposited the cussing Tinker into the tub. "I'll be back soon with some food, k?"
Whatever the woman yelled at her through the gag, it sounded very much like 'vacuum'.
"Alright, see you in a bit!"
The scene she saw when she reentered the living area was vaguely familiar. What with Regent stationed in front of the TV absentmindedly playing his games while Tattletale was sprawled out on the couch with a water bottle pressed to her forehead. What was unfamiliar, and a bit strange to see, were the two other Taylors in the room.
The Bug Taylor sitting next to her Tattletale, unmasked and holding her face in her hands. Not too far away in the love seat, literally twiddling her thumbs, was the star faced Taylor who now had a regular Taylor face somehow.
It was a little weird. She wondered how the Links handled it.
"So, when are the other Taylors going to get here?"
"In a bit. Grue said he's taking the long way to stay out of the cops' way." Tattletale near mumbled as she gestured towards the seat next to the Star Taylor, "Take a seat, make yourself comfortable, get to know the other Taylors. Pretty sure there's a lot to go over."
Bug Taylor, Skitter, slumped back into the chair and let out a hefty sight. "She's right, sit down. I'll try to explain what's going on."
"*snort* Like anyone has a clue on what's going on dork."
"Shut up, Regent," Skitter grit out, obviously stressed about something. Though Taylor couldn't say she blamed her. "Just sit, please?"
"Alright," Taylor said easily enough, it wasn't like she didn't want to know what was going on herself. The Star Taylor, Starfield, gave her a brief smile as sat down. One she tried to return before remembering she had her mask on.
Since everyone in the room knew who was and were unmasked themselves she didn't see any reason why she couldn't remove hers. But as she reached up to remove the mask she noticed something. "Ah, damnit!"
Every head, including Regent's, turned to look at her as she ran her hand up and down her hockey mask. "Fucking thing broken again! Now I get another one." Without any further fanfare she simply flipped down her hood and removed her, tossing it to her feet in frustration. "I'll have to check the sporting good store around her for another one... Ooh! Maybe I could get one with a cage this time!"
She looked back at the others. "What do you guys think?" She asked eagerly excited for opinions until she noticed how the others were staring at her. "What? Do I have something on my face?"
Tattletale broke out laughing as she clutched her head and stomach while Regent actually paused his game.
"Ooookay, Tattletale's being stupid again. Seriously, come on, is there something wrong with my face?"
"Something wrong with her face she ask..." Tattletale said between laughs.
"What happened to you? How did you get all of... that?" Skitter asked, eyes wide and hand waving expressively over her face.
Taylor frowned for a bit, wondering what they were talking before she placed her hand onto her face and then her lips suddenly made an 'o' of realization. "Oh! The scars? I got them when I was trying to get Lung's bounty! Pretty much destroyed my right eye and a good chunk of the nerves and muscles in my face. I tell you, PanPan had a screaming fit when she saw my face, wanted to restore it right away but I said 'Nope, scars are awesome and so are bragging rights, just make sure everything's working and I'll be great!'. Had to pay through the nose for that too."
"Payment? Your Panacea charges people?" Tattletale asked, sounding curious.
"Yup! Twenty-thousand dollars, lunch and I had to come along when Vicky did a shopping trip, and I had to pay for it all! That time it cost me like Sixty Thousand dollars!" A sound almost like a groan and strangled gasp camp from someone's throat. And then the bounty hunter pulled out a small photo-wallet. "Hold on, I had the guys take a picture... Ah! Here we are!"
She proudly displayed a photo of a smiling Shy Girl, mask removed and laughing despite the charred mess that was the right of her face, "It only hurt when I laughed and I was doing a lot of laughing back then."