Gathering Storm 1.2
My mother was an English Professor, and so I grew up reading the sorts of books that get shoved down kids' throats in high school. I remember reading Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking Glass, and for some reason, as I stared at the place where my father had just been slaughtered by Leviathan, a quote came back to me. Something the Queen said to Alice about believing six impossible things before breakfast.
I don't know why that particular quote came to me in that moment between moments, as Leviathan landed in the shelter with a thundering crash I couldn't hear, as the storm that the concrete had kept out swept in behind him. It was just that watching an Endbringer shove a fist through my father was an Impossible Thing, and no part of me believed it. I had just...missaw. That can happen, right? People mishear things all the time. That's right, it was an optical illusion. Like those heads that are actually a vase. My father is actually a vase, only now that I've seen the heads I can't unsee them, and my vision keeps switching between them.
Dad's alive, Dad's dead, Dad's alive, Dad's dead, Dad's alive, Dad's dead.
Leviathan lashed out, whips of water from his water-shadow cutting into the mass of screaming people, all in slow motion. Blood, just another kind of water, spraying left and right.
Dad's alive, Dad's dead, Dad's alive, Dad's dead, Dad's alive, Dad's dead.
Water was pouring into the shelter from every conceivable angle, already reaching up to my knees. A laser wide as a car smashed into Leviathon from above, to no visible effect.
Dad's alive, Dad's dead, Dad's alive, Dad's dead, Dad's alive, Dad's dead.
And then everyone was dead around me, and the beast turned and looked at me. I knew that look. I had seen it in Sophia's eyes day after unrelenting day. They were the eyes of a predator. And I was the prey. I was always the prey. The realization came to me then, as a figure that could only be Alexandria smashed into the Endbringer, pinning it against the far wall of the shelter. The whole structure shook with the impact, and only the water level, now at my waist, stopped me from stumbling.
Leviathan was a killer.
My father was dead.
I have no reason to live anymore.
Leviathan had thrown off Alexandria, and didn't even glance at me as it's tail sent a water-whip towards my midsection.
I didn't even try to avoid it. I wasn't nearly as afraid to die as I was to live.
This was the lowest I would ever get.
Trajectory.
Agreement.
Destination.
Agreement.
The water-whip passed straight through my stomach and impacted the concrete behind me, scoring a line in it.
I didn't die.
I was almost disappointed.
I looked down at my stomach, trying to figure out why I wasn't dead, only to see that my stomach wasn't there anymore. In its place, wind whipped back and forth wildly, constrained to the shape of my body. At least I thought it was; it was hard to tell. I poked it, my finger going straight through. Hmm.
I had been enough of a cape geek in a previous life to recognize what that meant. I had powers. I was a parahuman.
I was a parahuman, and Dad was dead.
I hate my life.
The water level was creeping up to my stomach, which had faded back into regular stomach. I needed to get out, I realized, if I didn't want to drown. Then again... No. Dad wouldn't want me to die here. I had to hold onto that. I had to hold onto...
Huh.
There was a new thing in my head. It felt like a slider, the kind that makes a light get brighter or dimmer as you move it up or down. I could feel it somehow, the same proprioception that told me where my hands were somehow locating it in the middle of my brain. And just like a finger, I could move it. It was currently at the very bottom. Zero percent, it felt like.
Well, it's not like my day could get any worse.
I pushed the slider up a little.
I felt it immediately. All of the emotions I was feeling, so many I felt like I would burn and freeze and explode with them, the fear and the grief and the anxiety and the horror, lessened. Just drained away a little. I gasped reflexively, which lead to another discovery - I was wispy. Instead of just my stomach, my entire body had dissolved partway into wind. I could still feel everything; in fact, I could feel more than everything. New senses opened themselves up to me. I could feel airflow in a way human skin never could, every eddy and whirl of high-pressure pockets collapsing into lower-pressure pockets, every pull of the wind. I could even change them. It was like breathing.
Other senses hovered at the edge of my awareness. Something about static electricity, and more about temperature. I could feel my mind sharpening just a little bit, thoughts becoming clearer, more rational. It felt like I was seeing the sun for the first time, or taking a breath after having gone for so long without air. I couldn't remember the last time I felt this good.
I pushed the slider further, inching it up to fifty percent.
My senses expanded further, covering the entire shelter, and my mind expanded to compensate. Emotion fell away, and I found myself more clearheaded than I'd been since Mom had died. So many things that I had never understood became obvious. That look in Dad's eyes wasn't my fault, and neither was Mom's death. Sophia was clearly mentally unstable and violent in a way that suggested she had other victims than just me. Emma had gone through a traumatic experience while I was at camp and latched onto the first person that made her feel safe. So many things. The sheer gross negligence of the staff at Winslow High suggested that something was protecting Emma, Sophia and Madison, something bigger than just a lawyer father or good looks. I was an idiot for taking that abuse for so long when just beating the shit out of Sophia would have stopped it. A week's suspension was easily worth an end to the bullying.
In fact, I had powers now. Granted, I wasn't exactly sure what they did or how to use them, but I would learn. Already I was manipulating the eddies and whirls of wind within and around me, and suddenly I realized that I could control the water too. Not to the same extent, but I could. I realized that I was more or less already flying, as the shelter was now an underground lake. Crackles of static charge surged around me, and with a thought I put them together and moved them. A blinding flash of light and concussive wave later, I realized that I could make lightning.
My power was obvious.
I was a thunderstorm.
I laughed, the winds within me howling my amusement into the greater storm of Leviathan's making.
I was a goddamn thunderstorm.
And I could feel my power growing restless. A nudge here, a whisper there. Egging me on. Push the slider higher. Become. I could feel it, the desire to be more, to grow, to encompass, to exercise my wrath upon everything and everyone who ever harmed me. And with it would come the relief of rationality, of the cold clarity that staved off the depression I could sense waiting to bury me. I didn't have it in me to fight the urge. I didn't want to.
I pushed the slider all the way up. One hundred percent.
That was much better. I cracked my neck, or at least the vast swirling column of air that I was's top tilted slightly.
I was finally free from all those clouding emotions. Fear. Remorse. Grief. All gone, leaving only the clarity of the storm. I had several tasks to accomplish, but most would have to wait. I could feel him in the distance now, the so-called Endbringer. I felt him in the shifting pockets of air around him, in every droplet of the never-ending flood that poured out of him.
That fucker killed Taylor's father.
But I wasn't Taylor anymore.
I was Maelstrom.
And I was going to make Leviathan pay.
