Ok first off I'd like to thank everyone who followed and favorited this story. I wasn't expecting anyone to like it enough to bother. As a matter of fact I just got another notification saying someone else just favorited it. wow. secondly I'd like to thank the one person who reviewed the first chapter for suggesting I translate for the scotsman, you'll find them at the bottom of the page. Third, I'm going to try to update at least once a week for a while and see how that pans out.
o0OXWX…..Danny Hebert…..XWXO0o
Danny hasn't slept in 3 days. He hasn't eaten in 2, and he certainly hasn't had the will to shower.
He knew he stank.
He just doesn't care.
He's sitting at his kitchen table. A cup of day old coffee sits in front of him. The receiver for his cordless phone in hand. His thumb held stiffly over the green call button, ready to jump at the first ring. it is the only thing he can do in a situation like this. It's the only thing he can do when his daughter was missing.
Danny's daughter is missing.
He suppresses a sob with a shudder.
The police had told him she had never shown up for class on Friday. Never even got on the bus according to witnesses, though that wasn't out of the ordinary. She didn't often ride the bus anymore, for some reason. They had told him they'd do everything they could, but the distance from his house to the school was long and not well lit. Not to mention they had stopped replacing traffic cameras when the ABB had made it policy to just tear them back down.
She was gone and it was all his fault. He felt it in his gut. It's not like he was a rich man, or all that important, but Danny was well liked and held a position of some power within the dock workers association. So maybe, just maybe, someone would take Taylor to get to him.
It's been three days since he last saw his daughter. He'd give them whatever they want.
And if someone wasn't holding her for ransom? If it was just random Street crime, If she was.. If she.. Danny's mind still wouldn't let him make that connection. He couldn't lose her too. He couldn't lose the rest of his family.
He needed to be out there Looking for his daughter, but everyone had agreed that he needed to stay home, just in case she came back. So he had called Kurt. Had him organize the boys. Called in favors and debts. Most of the dock workers not already on a job were out looking for his daughter.
He never realized he had more manpower than kaiser.
It was kind of humbling. Or it would be if he could think something other than "find Taylor".
Three hundred men. All scouring the city. Roughing up gang members and pounding on doors. Looking for his lost daughter. And they hadn't heard anything. Hadn't found anything.
Three days and Danny sheds his first tear in three years.
o0OXWXVXWXO0o
The phone rings. Danny starts awake, slumped at the kitchen table. Slamming the call button he jams the receiver to his ear.
"Where is she?" he says, barely stopping himself from screaming into the handset.
"Is this the Harbert household?" The woman on the line sounds old and tired.
"My daughter, where is she?" Danny chokes out.
"Are you Danny Harbert?" she presses.
"YES, DAMNIT, NOW TELL ME WHERE MY DAUGHTER IS!" His yell comes out and a small seismograph in the bay picks up a tremor. It barely registers with the woman.
"Sir, I need you to calm down. My name is Jackie, and I'm the night shift nurse supervisor at Brockton gen. Your daughters here, Mr. Harbert. She's… stable… currently." she sighs. "Mr. Harbert, we need you here, now. We need you to sign a number of release forms…. and your daughter, she… she needs fairly urgent surgery, sir. And probably at least one blood transfusion. Are you a donor match for your daughter, by any chance, sir?"
Danny was out the door and sprinting to his ratty old pickup as soon as he knew where his daugher was. He fumbled the keys twice while the nurse told him something about release forms. He dropped the receiver and peeled out of his driveway at the word donor.
o0OXWX…..Nurse Jackie…..XWXO0o
It was.. Awful. Just awful.
To think that someone could hurt a little girl so badly. It made her blood run cold with a righteous fury so pure it could have been used as jet fuel.
This was the third bandage change in the last hour and for the third time in an hour she wants someone's head mounted on her wall.
Taylor was her name. Found on the student transit pass in her back pocket. Carried into the ER by the biggest man she'd ever seen, and she'd been in the same room as manpower on three separate occasions.
He'd come sprinting into the ER, through the wall. He shouldered his way through like it was candy glass. Screaming at the top of his lungs for a doctor, in an accent so heavy they called for a translator.
And he was shirtless.
Then he had set her down and it no longer mattered.
Tall and skinny, she had a frame that would have been more at home on a boy, or maybe a corpse at this point.
Her legs were… they looked like… she didn't think she'd ever eat hamburger again. And the bugs, oh the bugs! Crawling in and out of the wounds. Just thinking about it made her want a shower. How was she even alive? The answer? Blind luck and what looked to at one point have been the man's shirt, now a rather expertly applied set of tourniquets.
Even the on call physician had stopped and just stared for a second.
Then everything had happened all at once, as it does regularly in a hospital like BB gen.
Taylor had been whisked away to surgery, the living mountain following. And the ER had gone back to something resembling normal.
Which brought her back to the present, and the fact that said living mountain had been within twenty feet of Taylor at all times since her arrival. O sure, security had tried (For a given value of try) to tell him that he had to stay in the waiting room.
The mountain had simply rumbled and gripped the handle of his oversized sword.
He has a visitors pass pinned to his kilt now.
They were still waiting for the PRT to call back because, really? There was no chance this guy wasn't a parahuman.
She sighed and thought not my problem right now, before finishing the bandage. Rapid footsteps from the open door herald the arrival of a frantic looking man with a too big nose and glasses. His shirt is untucked on the left side and looks like it has seen better days. He has only the one shoe on his right foot while the sock of the left has a large hole showing his last three toes to the world. Also he wreakes.
"TAYLOR!" the man yells.
Practically flying the man races to the child's side, he falls to his knees and grabbes her hand. His face streaked with tears and his hair matted. He lets out a single, strangled, sob.
"what happened to you?" he whispers.
o0OXWX…..Danny Hebert…..XWXO0o
Danny had never driven so fast in his life. Well over 100 the whole time he was on the freeway. It didn't matter. Nothing mattered besides getting to his daughter as quickly as possible. He didn't bother with a parking space, just ran his car up on the sidewalk and sprinted towards the door.
Running into the lobby he saw there were three people in line at the desk. He doesn't slow down. Doesn't stop. Simply slammes into the desk, jostling the man at the front of the Que off to the side.
"MY DAUGHTER! WHERE IS SHE!?" He screams. His nails leaving small scratches in the desk.
The nurse looks cowed.
"N..n..name? Sir?" She stutters.
"Hebert." Danny ground out.
"okay." The familiarity of performing her task refirming her resolve. her eyes refocus on her screen. "Heeeeebeeeert." she draws out the e's while tapping at her keyboard. "looks like one Hebert. Room 313."
Danny sprints away.
"sir! You need to sigh in…!" the nurse tries to call out.
Danny has already rounded the corner and is sprinting down the hall to the elevators.
"313." Danny mumbls. "most places have the floor as the first digit of the room number."
Reaching the elevators he slams his fist into the call button hard enough to crack it… the display at the top shows the car descending from the 7th floor. Not fast enough.
Mind made up he sprints through the door marked "stairs". Three flights. Just three flights of stairs.
He takes the first flight in two mighty leaps but stumbles on the landing above. The next two are taken three steps at a time. reaching the third floor landing and seeing the door marked with a big red 3 he slams the release bar hard enough to decouple the hydraulic "slow-stop" system on the door jam.
He's in a long hallway. The sign on the wall across for the stairwell he slams into shows rooms 300 - 310 to the left and 311 - 315 to the right.
He shoves off the the right and stumbles before righting himself and continuing on his mad dash. Her room comes up on the left. The door is already open.
"TAYLOR!" he screams as he rounds the doorframe. Pulling a small piece of molding off as he stops himself from sliding past the room.
He crosses the room in one step. His vision a tunnel with only Taylor visible at the end. Covered in bandages that have slowly turned brown.
Sliding to a stop he looks down at his daughter and falls to his knees. Gingerly he takes her hand, and in that moment the mental walls come down. He cries. Sobbing weakly, his cheeks Streak with moisture.
"what happened to you?" Danny whispers.
He doesn't expect an answer. He doesn't even register the massive hand resting on his shoulder.
"Gantin' things, danny, gantin', gantin' things.(1)" rumbles a voice behind him.
It's only then that Danny registers the grip and looks up. Standing above him is the largest man he has ever seen, and Danny hires people who move 300 pound crates by themselves. without powers. On their shoulders.
He has to be at least eight feet tall and five wide. His arms hang down past the knee of his right leg and his fingers are as big around as Danny wrist. He's shirtless, showing off his rippling muscles and massive beer belly. His torso is at least as wide as the bed Taylor was laying on and strapped across its back is a scabbard. The handle is ornate and covered in filagree. Depictions of what appeared to be the Scottish Highlands adorned the belt and what he can see of the scabbard. Judging from the fact that the handle pokes up above the… man's right shoulder almost two feet and down below his left hip by another foot it must be at least seven feet long.
Following the patterns on the strap Danny eyes arrived at the man's missing left leg. Which had been replaced with the largest caliber weapon danny had ever seen. It is a ventilated large bore machine gun that looks like it had been ripped right off the top of an MBT. As a matter of fact he can see faint markings that looked like they could have been mounting brackets at one point.
And he's wearing a kilt.
Danny's mouth dries up.
"who.." he swallows "who are you?"
"Aam... weel 'at is.. mah nam is... Ah... dornt ken?(2)" the huge man sounds almost embarrassed. If an artillery barrage could sound embarrassed. "But Ah ken who ye ur Daniel Hebert. an' Ah ken who Th' lassie is.(3)" he looks over at Taylor with sad eyes.
"but.. But why are you here? how do you know us?" Danny looks back at his daughter.
"Ah dunnae kinn. a body minute aam slicin' mah way ben a stoaner ay aku's drones, th' next aam standin' in a corridur unable tae recaa mah ain nam.(4)" He croakes.
Danny's back straightens and he looks back up at the bear chested man.
"look I don't know who you are and I don't have time for your memory problems right now. As you can see I have a lot to deal with, so if you would leave I'd appreciate it" Danny says in his best 'go away' voice.
"That's th' trick isnae it? Ah cannae.(5)" He presses. "If Ah e'en hink abit it Ah gie weak. Ah dornt hink eh'd make it a mile.(6)"
Danny cocks an eyebrow at this. This guy claims he can't leave taylor? That just sounds creepy, not to mention the fact that he is currently shirtless in his daughter's hospital room. Isn't security supposed to deal with people like this? (though secretly he doesn't think many people would have been able to make him do anything he didn't want to.) But, Danny muses, he also doesn't seem like the kind of man who would take advantage of the situation, or hurt either him or his daughter. In fact now that he thinks about it he realizes that having the giant in the room makes it feel more like home.
Huh.
"can you… can you just wait in the hall? I need to be alone with my daughter for a while." Danny half begs, half hopes.
"Ah hink Ah can dae 'at.(7)" the monument of muscle muses.
the huge redhead walks towards the door, a soft thunk rattle every other step. stopping at the door he turns around and looks at the back of the distraught man's head.
"I'll be reit ootwith th' duir, danny.(8)" the mutton chopped man mutters.
"Wait." Danny calls out a half a beat later. "What do i call you? Just for now until you remember your name?"
"Ah... Ah guess ye coods caa me Th' Scotsman.(9)"
o0OXWX…..Translations…..XWXO0o
1: Horrible things, Danny, Horrible, Horrible things.
2: I'm... well that is.. my name is... I... don't know?
3: But I know who you are Daniel Hebert. and I know who the girl is.
4: I don't know. One minute I'm slicing my way through Aku's drones, the next I'm standing in a hallway unable to recall my own name.
5: That's the trick isn't it? I can't.
6: If I even think about it I get weak. Ah don't think I'd make it a mile.
7: I think I can do that.
8: I'll be right outside the door, danny.
9: I... I guess you could call me The Scotsman.