Summoner

by codekinguu

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17. Chapter 17-20

Chapter 17

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

"Repeat my orders." She said quietly.

Bakuda nodded above her as she used her lap as a pillow, still half-dead and trying to claw back to the land of living on the couch.

With one ear muff just slightly open, she was able to hear Bakuda list them off.

"Rule one, refrain from killing people unless necessary for your own survival. Rule two, absolute secrecy. Rule three, act normal. Rule four, if something big is going down or is about to, notify you immediately. Rule five, do not be overzealous about any of these rules and put your own survival above them if necessary, barring rule two. Rule six, in the event of my death, try to become a good hero, take care of yourself mentally, physically, and emotionally, and move on with your life as best as you can. Seek therapy, long term. Rule seven, start a decent exercise, combat, and shooting range regimen." Bakuda quoted, before a small gasp left her.

"Wait, were you calling me fat…?" Bakuda murmured, sounding momentarily offended, and Taylor let out a tiny sigh, torn between ignoring her stupid rambles and the small note of insecurity in Bakuda's voice.

"No, Bakuda. You're just soft." She murmured, then tapped her thigh. It squished under the jeans. "I'm enjoying it right now, but in melee fights the average grunt could destroy you, and I need you alive even if worse comes to worst. Okay?" She whispered, her eyes slipping shut at last, but not before she noted the frankly creepily happy expression on Bakuda's face.

Damn it, what was it? What did she even say this time …?

"Your name. Real one." She demanded, barely a whisper.

"Mia Emertson." Bakuda said without the slightest hint of hesitation, and she huffed through her nose in amusement.

"Really nice name, actually. Nice to meet you, Mia. Brush my hair until we both fall asleep. Wake me up before it hits eleven PM."

"Yes! Okay." Mia whisper-shouted in glee.

Immediately, Mia's fingers began brushing her hair back, and Taylor pretty much melted. It was bizarre how something so simple felt so nice. And it did actually help with the headache. Honestly, she had been planning on having Bakuda as a pet of sorts, on some kind of permanent probation, but it was already extremely hard not to like the… new version of her that she made. Because this was obviously not the same person .

But now she was more tempted to just treat her like a little sister that had a very strange obsession with her big sister.

That was not a great analogy especially considering the physical age gap, but it was the only one she could come up with that wasn't creepy or weirdly sexual in any manner, so she was gonna roll with it.

She was woken up by Bakuda in full costume, a really nice costume of white and black and yellow and wires and grenades on her hips. Her white helmet and respirator were on too, making her voice sound distinctly robotic. Cool effect.

"Lung wants me for a meeting. He's mad at Coil. Thinking of trashing his territory up sometime soon. Probably about that. I dunno. I have to go. It's also about eleven twenty right now." Bakuda informed her as she gently shook her awake, and Taylor groggily blinked at her for a moment as the words registered.

Then she sighed, low and long. Her migraine had turned into a headache by now, but she still felt like shit.

"Fuck. I'm going then. See ya."

Bakuda nodded frantically.

"Sure thing, boss."

She went to get up, couldn't. She glanced down.

"... You can let go now." She dryly commented, and Bakuda's hand jerked back.

"Oh s-sorry. Uh. Bye." Bakuda mumbled, then got up, and with the most supreme reluctance, turned away and walked away to climb up the ladder that led to her safehouse.

She sighed again, and activated Teleport. A small collection of mental images bloomed in her mind. She chose her attic.

Purple swirls and ribbons of energy began to spring around her, with a wavering sound of whistling air, over the course of four seconds coalescing into a vortex of purple that surrounded her from head to toe.

As she popped back into her attic and fell onto the hard floor with a wince, she idly wondered why the fuck this stupid summoner spell couldn't be any less flashy and most importantly, less loud.

Lisa blinked at Taylor incredulously, brows raising as she stared at her boss with pink fluffy earmuffs on, laying on the couch with a blanket on top of her and staring up at the ceiling like a literal corpse in a coffin, eyes glazed over.

She tapped her shoulder, went to take an earmuff off, and only got a heated slap on the wrist for it, Taylor hissing like a grumpy snake at her.

"Migraine. Power overuse. Meditating. Be quiet." Taylor grumbled, and with brows raised in bemusement, she decided to wait for tomorrow to tell her what she'd found and try to get her to agree to help her find the girl.

Not that she got much info, despite spending over twelve fucking hours on her feet and running around until she got a lead. Then another unconnected one and just gradually thinning what was bullshit and what wasn't.

She learned a lot, but not enough to find her yet.

The girl's name was Emily, and she was so scared and lonely that she tried to befriend a pair of homeless guys at the homeless shelter, who quickly realized the girl was a cape due to Merchant rumors going down the grapevine. One of them tried to sell the info to the assholes, and ended up scaring the girl away, and then a week ago, the Empire somehow heard and had put a bunch of homeless guys on their payroll to watch out for a girl of Emily's description in the homeless shelters and soup kitchens, however few of those there were left in Brockton.

That was just two days ago.

They just had to buy a police and PRT radio scanner and go grab the girl before the PRT did, probably the next time she went to rob a place for some money. And the girl had to eat somehow, so it was only a matter of time until she did.

Taylor had said by next week she'd start getting some decent money in from a small time drug deal she had with fucking Faultline of all people, so she might have to get on her for that.

And as if the name called the devil, Taylor grunted before she could begin her short trip to the shower, still on the first step of the stairs. She turned, head peeking around the wall.

"Lisa. Faultline's grabbing Canary tomorrow, eleven in the morning. Her transport is going through Montreal. I'm going personally, want to be there when they free her. You coming?" Taylor spoke, softly and slowly, still drilling holes into the ceiling with her eyes.

"Yep. Also, you're not gonna… you know…?" She gestured, a little concerned.

Taylor didn't say anything.

"Master her…?" She explained, hoping that Taylor wouldn't do that to a woman that was more innocent than Lisa herself just because of her power, and Taylor scowled in reply.

"No. I want her, bad, but she hasn't done anything wrong. I'm not Mastering innocents if I don't absolutely have to for some reason. I'll try to recruit her normally. If she tries to Master any one of us, then I'll make her ours by force. Now go away. Talking hurts. Noise bad."

Lisa rolled her eyes.

"Sound evil, feather girl go get, unga bunga." She half-mocked with a light chuckle, and went to take her shower.

"Hilarious." Taylor dryly intoned from downstairs behind her, and Lisa didn't care, because she was always the target audience of her own jokes and she found it funny.

After a very awkward conversation with Taylor's dad that yes, they had been late because they were going around having fun and trying to find Lisa a job, and no, that it did not involve drugs or alcohol despite Taylor's near comatose state from her headache, and that yes they were safe, a point he harped on until she actually had to whip the gun out to show him how safe they were, she finally went to bed.

Tomorrow after breakfast, the moment Mr. Hebert walked out the door, Taylor sighed as she put the last dish on the drying rack, turning to face her.

"I got Bakuda. She's ours. Loyal as can be. Left her as a mole of sorts in the ABB. We've got about two hours until Faultline hits the transport, then about a half hour drive to the drop-off. Gotta be up in Montreal by eleven thirty or so. I'll go and pick her up myself, fly back with her. Sure you wanna come? We'll be flying to and from."

She hesitated for a moment, then put the towel down and sighed in bewilderment.

"You got Bakuda? Already? Damn, you work fast. It's a bit scary, honestly." Lisa chuckled, because to some extent, it was. "Alright. I was always a bit curious about what flying is like."

"SLOW THE FUCK DOOOOOOWN YOU WITCH-" Lisa demanded, then trailed off into a high-pitched scream as the sound barrier broke around the dark purple bubble, covering her in a foggy cone.

Taylor turned left and just laughed in an echoing voice that wasn't hers, nothing but a purple tether connecting them and saving Lisa from splattering against the countryside as a red smear. It was kind of mean to laugh at her, but the way she had been so cocky and confident about flying until she grabbed her with Syndra The Dark Sovereign's power and began flying was incredibly amusing.

Really, such a drama queen. She was fine. Floating in a bubble of purple energy, in fact. Nothing was going to touch her. Not even the air.

"We're going to be late if I slow down! Need to meet her face to face when she's released so she knows who to be thankful to!"

"I'M QUITTING!" Lisa screamed as the sky rumbled around them with nonexistent thunder as if they were a jet.

Which, they might be. How fast was a jet? It sure sounded roughly the same.

"Two weeks notice!" She chirped back, a wide grin on her face.

"I HATE Y-"

She sped up.

Lisa's words trailed off to a high pitched squeal.

The small headache she was still nursing would probably get quite a bit worse by the time they'd get back, but it was worth it.

Notes:

anotha shortie

next chap has aktion

if anyone is wondering, Bakuda's name is never specified anywhere, so i made one up.

Chapter 18

Chapter Text

It was only about fifteen minutes from the meeting point when Lisa screamed something, something that sounded like actual words rather than her previous yells and curses.

She brought her closer, and ignored the scowling glare as Lisa thrust her burner phone at her, flashing with a call.

She squinted.

Faultline.

Her brows furrowed, and with a flick of her finger, the phone was torn out of Lisa's hand before coming to hers as she abruptly slammed to a halt, the notion of momentum nothing but a suggestion to Syndra's ridiculous power.

"Oh, thank fuck. " Lisa groaned, mildly green and queasy as she tried to squirm, not succeeding because Taylor was keeping her pinned in a cast of energy from the waist down, just to make her feel a bit more secure.

She clicked the button and brought the phone to her ear.

"Renata? We have a problem, you said to call if we need back up!" Faultline yelled over the sound of yelling and general chaos.

Was that a gunshot?

She groaned inwardly.

For fuck's sake. So much for them being professionals.

"Not Renata, other agent. What's the situation?" She calmly asked, expanding her personal field a little and tightening it to block sound as well, just to not have the scream of air make the phone useless, before snapping back into motion as she swapped to the rune of Domination, 'Ultimate Hunter' instantly picking up on Newter's location.

Six minutes away, maybe. If she had to extract them and fly them to the rendezvous point, she also had to conserve some strength for the trip back.

Speaking of which, Faultline cussed, and after a brief commotion, Newter's voice came through.

"Hey, it was a lure! We tried to stop the transport and got it easily, but half the damn cars on the highway stopped and started spewing PRT agents before we could grab them! We're surrounded, the entire road is fucked becase boss dug a giant trench around us, nobody can move vehicles in or out, Trainwreck's holding most of them off- fuck!" He yelped, and she heard the screech of crumpling metal.

"There's also two heroes! We're right in the middle of it, if you could send someone to extract us we owe you big time , but there's no way we can grab Canary and the other fucker in there! Our backup transport's just a couple minutes out towards the woods, it's a beast so we can get away if you have a- a teleporter or something, I don't know!"

Her eyes narrowed, her lips pursing.

She wasn't letting Canary go to the fucking Birdcage for a simple misspeak. And she was not giving up on not one, but multiple possible capes.

She could just give up on the entire operation for secrecy's sake, and it wouldn't even be ill advised, but she'd lose both Faultline, and what she made all this fuss for in the first place.

"Sending a telekinetic, of sorts. Hold your ground for five, maybe six minutes. And we will cash in that favor." She said, leaving no room for argument, before she hung up.

Newter tried to peek for an angle, some kind of way to get out and make them an opening to slip through.

He saw nothing but lines of flashing lights, nozzles, and two costumed idiots trying to find a way to break into their defensive perimeter, a broken mess of overturned cars turned to cover by Trainwreck, who was missing an arm right now because he got clipped by a bit of foam which quickly began to expand with enough speed to make him think it would eat up his entire torso.

So he'd just detached it like a crab. It was kinda cool.

How much that damn thing could expand was ridiculous, so it was likely he wasn't even wrong.

All around the makeshift walls of shoddily glued and welded together cars, a deep ten foot trench had been sunken in beneath them, and Elle's power was slowly transforming their jagged circle into a giant messy fortress of jagged steel and razorwire, metal pipes and walls slowly rising around them and mixing with what was already there in a manner he imagined looked similar to what the chicks in the club saw when they were tripping out on his spit.

He jumped when the ground below him abruptly turned coarse and rough, and blinked down at rust-red flooring, then hurriedly kicked off a wall to dodge a rubber slug that had just zipped through one of the windows, sending broken bits of glass everywhere.

Six minutes.

They could do six minutes, maybe, if it wasn't for that Tinker guy zipping around and jumping over them like a jackrabbit, trying to take potshots at Elle. Then they could definitely do six minutes.

He didn't think much of Trainwreck yet, but he had to give it to the guy that his armor could take a damn beating despite it looking like crap, and he had a pretty good sense of battle tempo.

He went from protecting Elle when Gregor was spewing his own version of containment foam out at the troopers to seamlessly dashing back to take Gregor's place to unload his armcannon as Gregor recharged, and vice versa. As well some quickjob repairs. Usually by tearing chunks and doors off the cars melting into the walls, but they had enough to work with here.

If he hadn't blocked enough shots and grabbed enough cars to make temporary barriers around them, they'd have been bowled over by foam and rubber bullets by now.

He was still a bit of an asshole, but he was smoothing out quickly.

Newter's job was simple.

Playing baseball with the frickin' foam grenades, at least until Elle reached the rooftop of whatever building she was making and they had aerial cover.

Speaking of which, he saw another poke-ball looking thing leisurely shoot out of the jumping Tinker's hand as he made another pass over them, and Newter quickly raced up the half-formed walls in a spiral to slap it back out, once again just barely managing not to catch any of the foam on his hand.

He hit the ground twelve feet below with a roll, then glanced around at where Faultline was using a mirror to check through the windows and crumble the road around and under the troopers, mostly to cause enough chaos to stop the bombardment of suppressing fire.

He breathed out a short sigh of relief.

One of the other capes finally decided he had enough at that very moment, and Newter jumped away from the sudden gap in their half-transformed fence, frozen pieces of jagged metal flying all about as the hero crashed through, a peek of crackling ice armor the only thing he managed to catch before a cannonball slammed into the dude's stomach and threw him back out like a pingpong ball.

"Nice shot!" He yelled over his shoulder at T-wreck, and winced when he noticed all the jagged metal that had punched a couple holes into Gregor as he stood protective vigil over Elle.

Fucking idiots. What if Gregor hadn't been there? Elle would have had a hole or four in her. Great heroes, the lot of these assholes. Weren't even following the appropriate escalation Rule.

A whistling sound rapidly approached him and he blurred out of the way as a bola tried to rush through the rapidly repairing fence, only to get tangled in the wire, then consumed into the metal wall that ate them both.

Elle could buy them six minutes. Well, more like three now. Two? He couldn't say he had a good sense of time.

But honestly, he wasn't sure there was a point. What the hell was a telekinetic going to do against all this crap?

They hadn't even waited for him to give them a location. The meeting point they'd agreed to was like an hour away. Felt like hot air, honestly. They'd probably just leave them here, they seemed the secretive type to pull that kinda stuff.

He went back to lightly jogging around their inner perimeter, keeping his eyes in the sky and peeking through the tiny gaps in the walls and windows, watching out for anything he could do.

Which wasn't much, not in this kinda situation.

It had been a bit too long since the Tinker had made a pass at them.

And because the world hated him, that was when the right side of the cylindrical structure Elle was making abruptly froze and exploded again.

Newter dashed to the left, racing along the half-formed building's surface on all fours up to the right, aiming to drop on whoever entered from above right as they came in.

The ice-armored prick came in first, a shield of ice on his hand, having learned his lesson from Trainwreck, and just over his shoulder, the silver-shining tinker guy was aiming something right at Gregor, a strange thing that looked like a sphere with a handle on it more than a gun.

Newter decided not to chance whatever that was, and dropped onto the Tinker, kicking him in the helmet with one leg as his tail yanked the sphere-thing upwards to the sky.

An electric pulse from the guy's suit briefly made him seize up, long enough for the Tinker to buck left and send him spinning off of him, just a tad too far from the ground to abuse his power and move out of the way as the sphere-thing was yanked to aim at his chest.

Then a dark, black purple aura suddenly flared around everything in sight, including him, and he was left frozen midair, feeling like someone had made a cast of steel around his body, unable to move even an inch.

The sudden silence was both disturbing and incredibly jarring after getting so used to the constant chaos around them.

At least he could move his eyes enough to try and look around, and found his brows metaphorically raising as he saw lines and lines of troopers half-hidden behind their vehicles, all frozen in the exact same way he was, a faint wispy smoke, black-purple, holding them down.

Then he turned his eyes upwards, and his eyes widened as a giant black sphere lined with the same black and purple energy descended from the sky, lowering itself into their makeshift fortress.

The cast around him loosened abruptly, and he fell on his ass before jumping up and spinning around to stare warily at the sphere.

"Is the transport the middle van in the distance, with one door open?" A voice came out of the thing, one that would have been sexy if not for the echoing, imperious nature of it.

"Uh, are you Summ's gal?" He asked now that he could actually move his jaw, glancing around in complete befuddlement at the hundred or so troopers and at least two enemy capes he could see, all locked in place like faintly squirming and struggling statues. He felt a pressure weight him down in warning, and he grimaced, raising his hands.

"Shut up. Yes or no?" The voice asked in a near snarl, now sounding far angrier, and he twisted his head a little to peek through a window, squinting.

"Yep, that's them."

The voice did not reply for a moment, the feeling of a weight pressing down on his shoulders fading. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw movement amongst the sea of purple-black statues, and turned his head.

He sputtered out an incredulous laugh as he watched the PRT van float up a dozen feet before slitting open like it was made of paper with a distant screech of metal.

"Holy shit. " He laughed.

"Impressive." Faultline and he spoke at the same time, and after sharing a brief glance, they both turned to check who else had been freed.

Thankfully, just their team.

The Tinker guy looked mad as hell. It was kinda funny.

He turned back to the van, and watched two giant metal chair-looking things float up out of the van, which was carelessly dropped back into its spot.

Then the world went from zero miles an hour to a thousand, and even with his increased perception, his eyes widened as the scene around them flashed away almost comically fast.

Barely ten seconds of spinning confusion and thunder roaring in his ears later, they were embraced by impossibly soft-looking white fog and slammed to a halt.

Curiously, he did not splatter against the top of the bubble when they did so. Momentum fuckery, something he was quite familiar with.

It took him a moment to understand what the hell had happened though, until he saw a ray of sunshine peek through the fog like some kind of divine light falling on his face, and then it clicked.

Clouds.

He watched dark shapes move through the clouds, until they all were close enough to see each other, wisps of cloudy fog parting from the movement, the bubbles they were all held in suddenly allowing air and moisture through, sound as well.

His first thought was that he'd never seen Elle- or Labyrinth, right now, so present before, her eyes wide in wonder behind her mask as she gaped at everything around them.

He'd also never seen Faultline so startled, her chest racing up and down as she lay on her back in her bubble, legs and arms pressed against its insides as she panted.

Trainwreck and Gregor both just looked awed at the novelty of literally floating inside a cloud.

Then the people in the transport gently floated up to the sphere in their mangled metal chairs.

Canary was fucking terrified, yikes. Like, barely not sobbing in fear terrified.

"Canary, relax. We don't mean you harm. "

He almost burst into laughter as he suddenly remembered a scene from some old movie about a horrifying creature in the clouds going like 'be not afraid' to the mortals below while looking like the most terrifying thing in existence. Some religious thing or another.

He wasn't sure, but he got the impression of a dirty look from the sphere thing that was holding all of them up with visible purple-black threads like chains, a very striking visual.

"I'll drop you off at your runaway vehicle. Shouldn't take more than a minute, but first, I'd suggest not removing the collar until Miss Mcabee has calmed down. Sorry Miss, but you look panicked enough to try to Master our current employees into releasing you. As for Oni Lee, Newter, do not let him out of your sight for a moment. Keep him drugged at all times. He'll try to kill every single one of you the moment he wakes up. The IV system keeping him sedated got left behind in the truck."

Canary mouthed something, shaking in her boots and tearing up. He grimaced. How the hell did people decide that chick was cage worthy? Nuts. The sphere abruptly disappeared, revealing a gorgeous woman dressed in what looked like a mix of a costume and a BDSM outfit, curiously bereft of any face covering. A face which held the most arrogant look he'd ever seen on a face.

Said woman floated closer, and a bit below, Canary.

"I can lip read, do not worry. I am Syndra. I work for Summoner. They have been paying attention to the travesty that is your trial, and have decided to free you. We have zero desire to hurt you. Someone more… social than me will come to talk to you soon, will come to offer you a place by our side. If not that, then at least, protection in exchange for not joining anyone else. Now, we're late, and I'm getting tired. Don't waste your air screaming."

With those not at all ominous last words, the spheres shifted.

Faultline and Trainwreck spoke, but not a sound escaped their bubbles, and they both seemed to realize it as they slumped.

Newter sat down in his sphere and tried to get comfortable, leaning back to enjoy the journey.

Not many chances to experience something this bizarre.

They tore through the clouds once more in much the same fashion, from zero to a hundred.

Except this time they went over the clouds, and man, he could get used to this.

It was over all-too-soon however, barely more than a minute before the chick in the bubble seemed to spot their ride, swivel abruptly to the side, and speed to the ground like a comet.

He did not even disconnect from the bottom of the bubble as they did so, and that was such a blatant and odd disregard for physics that he couldn't help but feel a bit confused. Not even his power could pull crap like this.

Whatever this woman was, it was not a telekinetic, not really.

The nondescript large van they used as a transport, a necessary upgrade after incorporating an eight foot tall Tinker power armor, came into sight, parked on a dirt path off the road and well-hidden enough by the trees to make it difficult to track them until it was too late.

The trees glowed purple and parted to let them fly down with a deafening series of cracks and creaks, like the hand of god was peeling them back for their landing, and after one more abrupt stop, they were all floating half a foot off the ground.

Without another word, the bubbles dissipated, and the woman rocketed back up to the sky.

He stared up at her, as did most of them.

"Whatever favor they're asking, if it's reasonable, we're doing it." Faultline deadpanned, then walked over to the metal chairs, waving him over.

He jogged over.

Chapter 19

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

To say that she was in a foul mood was like saying that Endbringers were a 'bit' tough.

There was a damn reason she hired Faultline to do this for her. Now, in front of something like a hundred troopers and at least two heroes, she'd been forced to use a bit of Syndra's power.

And now her head hurt like a bitch, again.

She had been expecting a migraine of the scale she'd gotten with Bakuda, but with her quickly growing soul, it seemed like her capability to use her Legends was getting better .

Still, she couldn't help but pace in tight circles the moment she touched back on the Bay, each breath an exhaled snarl of frustration.

And fucking Newter.

She wasn't sure if it was the Legends having fucked with her head or if she'd accidentally channeled a bit too much of Syndra's gloriously caustic, snarly personality, but the moment he said 'Summ's gal' she'd been sorely tempted to pop his fucking head like a grape.

She was still considering it.

Another problem that she should have taken care of earlier...

Trainwreck.

She quickly pulled her phone out, and texted him that she needed to see him in private, urgently, the moment they brought Canary back to Brockton.

Then realized she forgot to tell them that the drop-off point was canceled, and quickly sent a text message to Faultline telling her to just bring the cargo to her club, especially since one of them was so shaken she might need a day or two to digest things.

"Uh… Tay?" Lisa asked, and she hurriedly glanced up at her before continuing her pacing.

"Yeah?" She asked tersely, thinking and trying to stave off the anger.

"What's with the angry dragon impression?" Lisa asked, brow raised and Taylor let out another long, snarl-like sigh.

"I had to show myself. And a power. In front of a damn audience. And Newter, that bumbling fucking retard, he said 'are you summ's gal' when I went to save their sorry asses. So unless I got lucky and the heroes heard something else, they might know half my damn cape name already."

Lisa opened her mouth in protest, then seemed to rethink it, before slumping and sighing, kicking at the dirt at their feet as the city slowly entered mid-day below them.

"Okay, with your freakish obsession with secrecy, I can see why you'd be upset. But, look on the bright side. You got two capes, and Oni Lee at that, which wow what a fuckin' coincidence. I was certain that Alec had killed the motherfucker." Lisa said, and her curiosity peaked for a moment as she paused in her pacing.

"Who the fuck is Alec?" She asked, turning to stare at Lisa.

"I… should have been using his cape name but whatever, too late now. He's Regent. He was… a can of worms, actually. It took a while for my power to catch on, but eventually, I learned a lot about him, kept it to myself, until now. He was one of Heartbreaker's kids, escaped the bastard and worked with us. He was sandbagging, hard, and still more than carried his weight. All he needed was visual contact and he could make someone his physical puppet in a minute, max. The closer the better and faster. With us, he pretended he could just make people momentarily stumble and fall over at critical moments and such by gesturing with his hands and such. Kind of an asshole, but was fun. Still is, I think. Never saw him die nor hear about anyone saying he died. When Lung…" Lisa stalled, her brow furrowing a bit.

Taylor didn't offer empty sympathies for people she honestly didn't know, but she did keep her mouth shut in respect as she waited for Lisa to walk over whatever stumbling block she ran into.

"Right, when mister lizard decided to fry us, Oni Lee was on the opposite end from where Lung was coming from. They had us boxed in. We'd never have fought the assholes otherwise. Long story short, Regent volunteered to fight the asshole because he could keep him from pulling his grenade pins, clones included. He fought him for long enough to take him over completely, from what I got, then he tried to rush back and help us with Lung. Bit too late for that, but he did save me from getting torched by the rampaging asshole before he booked it. The question is, how the hell did the PRT get ahold of Oni Lee, and why is he still alive? Regent isn't the type to let a potential threat and trail like that live, not with who his father is." Lisa rushed out, her brows furrowing increasingly.

Then she looked to the side, and began to pace much like Taylor had.

Personally, she was still trying to work out the implications of having one of Heartbreaker's kids in her city. Or having had one.

Then Lisa paused, both hands over her mouth, thumbs pressing into her cheekbones.

"Alec was injured when he ran away. It's entirely likely he bled out or something, and Oni Lee was just working off his last commands until the PRT snatched him up because he was a Mastered drone. Or maybe he gave Oni Lee up to the PRT for protection. Maybe he's a Ward somewhere now…? It's not his style, but short of leaving the American continent, he must know his dad would pick up on the trail he left, it's not like he had many choices after this whole fuckup." Lisa rushed out, her hands dropping as her eyes widened, then she became far more animated, pacing in a small line as she kept her upper body turned towards her, gesticulating with her hands, progressively getting more excited and self-satisfied.

"This explains a lot of other shit too! Oni Lee was a right bastard who as far as people knew was always an inch away from getting a kill order because he consistently tried to murder everyone, even Wards, so it was entirely likely the reason Lung didn't bust him out was because his transport was kept so confidential that few people would have access to it. It would also explain why they put him in the same transport as Canary. There are a lot of capes, especially Masters out there, with some really, really strong opinions on the whole Canary shitshow, especially with the kind of precedent it set that would push even more Master capes into villainy, so it would make sense to give the transport both increased secrecy, and security, and put two problems together for convenience. It could also explain why that cocky bitch got shoved into a trap." Lisa said with no small amount of vindictiveness in her voice, then jerked a finger at Taylor.

"It's one thing to check up on the transport files, it's another to check up on high priority transports with two capes of high interest, one being a hair away from a kill order and the other being a public shitshow. Could be their mole got caught looking into something too high-clearance to justify himself. I'm assuming the only reason Dragon didn't send an aircraft to specifically carry them to the Birdcage was because some stupid moron wanted to put a bait out there for some enterprising cape protestor that might try to free Canary. It would explain the plain clothes PRT agents with trunks full of foam. Or maybe they just did that because Faultline's mole tripped something up and Dragon was busy, I don't know, but! Yeah!" Lisa exclaimed, as if she was about to continue, then just emphatically spread her hands in triumph in a 'witness me' fashion.

Taylor just stood there and stared, digesting all of this information and slightly marvelling at how quickly Lisa could deduce things even if her power had little to jack shit to work with. A mix of brains, deductive reasoning, and power bullshit.

"Okay, that is… that explains a lot of small background questions I had, but there are two very important ones left. What the f- what is a kill order?" She asked, spreading her arms and hoping it wouldn't be as grim as it sounded, and Lisa blinked at her, before facepalming with an audible slap.

"I completely fucking forgot to tell you. And considering your Eidolon-tier bullshit, you might need to know this." Lisa said, before pausing for a moment, licking her lips and humming in thought as she stared at somewhere above Taylor's head.

"A Kill Order is a document issued by the PRT allowing for the murder of a cape with no legal repercussions. Usually along with a large publicly funded bounty. Basically, you really, really, really don't want a fucking kill order on you. Oni Lee was always on the edge because he kept trying to kill anything that walked and breaking the reasonable escalation of force rule, the third of the unwritten rules, remember? Yea that one. A Ward would accidentally wander too far during patrol or chase some petty crook into ABB territory without realizing, then a moment later they're fighting for their life against a fucking psycho. Nobody sane in the Bay wants that kind of heat. But…" Lisa trailed off, and rolled her eyes at the worried frown Taylor was wearing, because yeah, it was starting to sound like the moment anyone knew what she was up to and doing to capes, she'd be put on that order.

"Okay, so keep in mind that the PRT is in large part, a PR organization. They want to recruit wherever possible, and the more kill orders you sign off on, the less people are going to be willing to play ball with you. Generally speaking, the only villains who justify a kill order are those where, if you were to poll the local villain community, Arson Murder Mcjones is going to say, "Yeahhhhh, you need to put that motherfucker down." Just as a rule of thumb, I guess. Or an example."

Her frown deepened.

If someone polled this cape community by the time she was done with it, they'd basically give her a medal and a wary stare at best.

If they got here that late.

"Now usually, in a healthy, functioning city, aka, not fucking Brockton, it's not something that's going to come up with any frequency. Here we had five fucking candidates being whispered about before Night and Fog moved out, leaving Lung, Oni Lee, and Hookwolf. Still at least two more than most cities. Moving on." Lisa said, then her tone took a tone like she was reciting something or reading directly off a book.

"Once it's made, it's open season on the motherfucker who got it. Civilians and capes can put money into a reward pool, and it's essentially open season on the target, and anyone who's got permission and knows the general rules is allowed to go after them. What usually happens is that overeager villains looking for violence, crazy vigilantes, and crazy hero wannabes crawl out of the woodwork and start hunting, at which point the heroes mostly lay back and try to contain the inevitable collateral damage. One surefire way to get an instant kill order is to make anything that's self-replicating. Could be pink grasshoppers or something, the PRT doesn't care, if it's self-replicating, you get an instant kill order. So, yeah, if you were planning on using some bizarre dead cape to make your own personal army of minions, make sure they can't breed." Lisa deadpanned, then waited for some kind of reply.

It took a moment.

She sighed an explosive sigh, rubbing at her temples.

"Wasn't planning to, but whatever. Good to know. Second question. Any chance we could find Alec?"

Lisa blanched, then made a cutting motion with her hand.

"Nope, no, no nononononope, not happening. After all the fuss he's kicked up, he's either joined up with the PRT for protection, in which case, I do not want to be within the same city as him because Heartbreaker definitely has insiders on the PRT and he's going to try to grab him, or he's all the way up in Europe by now, maybe France or something. Assuming he's not, you know… dead." Lisa said, trying to pass it off rather casually, but the forced lightness of her tone as she spoke the last few words was so obvious she even seemed to cringe at herself.

She grimaced a little.

Her first thought was a forceful hug.

Her second thought was where the fuck that thought came from because as far as she knew she was never a touchy person.

Her third thought was to blame Mia for making her realize how touch-starved she'd been by brushing her hair back and practically knocking her out in seconds by doing so, and indirectly, probably, contributing to the creation of that thought.

Her fourth thought was that a hug would probably be a bit too much for people that had known each other for barely three days, even if they pretty much lived together for all three of them.

Her fifth thought was 'eh, fuck it'.

She stepped forward, and before Lisa's eyes could focus back on the real world, she'd grabbed her sleeve and yanked her into a hug, her tiny surprised yelp oddly comedic to hear.

"I know how it feels to lose people." She murmured.

And she did.

She'd lost hundreds of them.

"Hugs help." She shrugged, and Lisa, stiff as a board, quickly relaxed with a snorting giggle.

"You're really ruining any chance of professionalism between us, you know that?" Lisa spoke into her shoulder, muffled, not tall enough to have her mouth free, lazily throwing her arms around her.

"Yeah probably, but professionalism doesn't help here like hugs do. And just to ruin the mood before this gets mushy enough to rot my teeth and make me cringe in embarrassment hard enough to snap my spine into a pretzel, I'm gonna circle back to our original conversation and resume." She dryly spoke, and Lisa let out a short burst of laughter into her shoulder, before nodding.

"So, I was not talking about recruiting Alec. I'm talking about exactly what you said. Heartbreaker might hear of this somehow, and if he hasn't, I want to take Alec with us and let him know. I don't know if you've done any research on the guy, but I have, and he tends to squat on a huge compound in the ass end of nowhere in Canada, surrounded by hundreds of brainwashed people armed to the teeth, many of them ex-PRT and military. The problem is that nobody ever knows if he's actually there or if he's taking another secret tour across the country to grab new victims. So if I could lure him somewhere, not necessarily here, but somewhere, and know where he is exactly, I could just pop up a hundred feet above him and vaporize him in an instant. Just like that, before he gets close to Alec."

Lisa sighed.

"Taylor, I get it's like your whole thing to want to kill the baddies, but you're basically asking me to use my only surviving half-friend as bait. For fucking Heartbreaker."

She grimaced.

"Yeah, that… sounds a lot worse when you put it like that." She admitted, chewing on her cheek. "Sorry."

"It's fine. Look, it's just, even if you're confident in yourself, even if I'm confident in you, I just… I don't want to touch that with a ten foot pole. Too many ways for it to go wrong. If you wanna kill the bastard so much, just scout out his compound, wait for him to be in it, and then just nuke it off the map or something with one ridiculous power or another. I don't want to drag Alec into this again. Wherever he is, whatever the hell he's doing, I hope he's having fun and being a lazy bastard because that's what he wanted out of life, and I want him to keep doing it."

She snorted out a light track of laughter.

"Sounds like a fun guy, honestly."

"He was a brat. Our bickering fits were legendary. Also, I've been talking into your hoodie for a while now and it's kind of getting hard to breathe." Lisa grumbled, and she let out a pensive humm, her mood very thoroughly restored by now.

"I don't knowwww…" She teased, in a bit of mocking rendition of how Lisa had teased her during that breakfast where she insulted her salting skills. "I've been hearing some mutinous whispers on the wind, something about you quitting? After such a fright, I'd rather keep you right there, you know." She dryly commented, and Lisa groaned.

"How on earth I didn't puke my guts out during that whole thing, I'll never know. Probably your physics-ignoring crap. I'm still mad at you." Lisa said, still talking into her hoodie.

"You don't really show it."

"Yeah… Hey Taylor?"

"Hm?"

"Are we friends? I'm pretty sure bosses don't tend to let their employees live with them, cook them breakfast, and hug them when they're feeling down."

"No, we are not friends." She started, and saw Lisa's eyes peek upwards from the scrunched fabric of her hoodie with a deadpan stare that screamed 'really?'

"We are best friends. Mostly through a process of elimination, honestly, I'm pretty sure neither of us has any other friends at the moment." She said, then grimaced as she realized how that might be a bit too insensitive to say, especially with that kind of wording. Process of elimination? Fucking really, Taylor?

Lisa, surprisingly, let out a small soundless laugh, her shoulders shaking, and Taylor relaxed.

"Really, none?" Lisa asked, bumping her chest with her shoulder a bit as she sagged further onto her.

"Nope. Haven't had friends since I was like… thirteen or so, I think. Shit happened, I gave up, you know how it goes, probably."

Lisa hummed.

"Not sure I do, but this is the kind of girl talk that isn't spoken about on top of a dirty hilltop with drying reeds and your friend wearing a domino mask."

"How is this girl talk? We haven't mentioned a single crush."

"Ew, no. Not that kind of girl talk. And our girl talk better stay that way. Relationships with my power are fuckin' impossible. Go out on a date once, have your power tell you they're wondering if you're as hot as their sister under those clothes, and you'll never wanna repeat the experience again, trust me. If you start raving about hot dudes I'm walking back ho-" Lisa paused abruptly, jerking back a bit, enough for her face to be visible, her eyes staring through her shoulder in muted shock.

"Lisa? You good?" She asked, loosening the hug and walking back a little, hands on her shoulders, tilting her head down a bit as if to stare into her eyes.

Lisa startled a bit, then nodded.

"Yeah. Yeah, I just… I called your place 'home'. That's… man, it's been a while since I could call anything that, especially without thinking. Kinda gave myself whiplash." Lisa murmured, then huffed a bemused rush of air out of her nostrils.

"We are no longer best friends." She intoned, voice mock-serious, and Lisa glanced up at her, brows furrowed in bemused suspicion. "You're promoted to little sister. Congratulations, Tattletale." She half-joked, struggling to contain a smile.

She had expected some kind of laughter, or maybe an eye-roll, or maybe some teasing.

She hadn't expected Lisa's eyes to widen like dinner plates as she tried to take a step back, staring up at her in shock.

Nor had she expected those eyes to suddenly begin glistening with tears.

Her eyes widened, blinking rapidly down at Lisa, confused. Lisa blinked back at her even faster, trying to clear the tears out of her eyes, most likely. Her hands let go, backing up a bit to hover over Lisa's shoulders as she found herself in a very awkward and confusing situation, unsure of what caused it.

"...I… Lisa? Are you okay?" She asked slowly, genuinely confused.

Lisa opened her mouth, closed it. Gulped, nodded, and then raised a hand to take off her domino mask and shove it into her hoodie before pressing her pointer finger and thumb into her eyes, taking a shuddering breath as she turned her head downwards.

"Y-Yeah. Uh. Not- I'm not sure what the fuck this is, sorry. Just…" Lisa vaguely waved her hand, limp wristed. "Uh, I guess that's a fresh wound, still. I didn't think it was, I can usually talk about it just fine, but that- wow, I'm just all sorts of fucked up lately aren't I…?" Lisa murmured, before pressing her open palm into her face, letting out a long-suffering sigh mixing with a groan.

She continued to stare, unsure of what to say or what Lisa was even talking about.

"Uh, just to… clear up the confusion, my b…brother killed himself." Lisa said, ruining the confident tone she was going for with that brief, wavering stutter. "It's what made me trigger. He had a joke going on w-with me, when I was little. He'd tease me by saying I'm his little sister, not his favorite one, and then he'd give in eventually and s-say…" Lisa continued, voice growing heavy and thick, warbling.

Her hands lowered onto Lisa's shoulders, and that seemed to give her the courage to spit it out.

"He'd say 'you're now promoted to "favorite sister' when I'd stop being a brat and do something nice for him." Lisa warbled out, taking a shaky, wet breath.

Taylor tugged her into a hug, and this time, when Lisa hugged back, it was tight around her waist, her tears wetting Taylor's black hoodie.

"H-he was into military stuff, a-and he found it funny. So uh, yeah, the… thing you said. Immediately after what I said. Just really… kinda caught me off-guard. And you... already reminded me of him, for some reason. Sorry." Lisa sniffled, then pulled back a little, using the entire lengths of her right-hand fingers to rub at her eyes, back and front. "Fuck, this is embarassing. You're never going to respect me again." Lisa murmured.

Taylor did something she hadn't in a while.

She thought of her mother, well and truly.

She thought of all the people her Legends had lost, people she'd grown attached to as their lives continued, only to feel the pain of watching them get ripped away, even if she was but a spectator.

She thought of all the people that she'd been, the people she'd seen, a world that only existed in her limitless memories.

It was numb, to some extent. She'd experienced too much to feel strongly about it all, and the things she did feel, she kept them down in a repressed ball of emotions, just like Lisa hid her feelings behind half-sincere jokes and nonchalance. But something about this whole interaction blew the cap off, and the emotions were spilling out of an overfilled bottle for her too.

She tugged Lisa back onto her shoulder, and hugged her tight. She took a deep, shuddering breath, feeling tears prick her own eyes.

"I… I'm sorry. I uhm. I lost my mother in a car accident. My dad too, pretty much. He stopped being a person until my trigger happened. Even now, he's… more of a house decoration, honestly. I lost my best friend too, shortly after that. She betrayed me. No reason, just did it. I… the… the capes I turn into?" She asked, ignoring the blaring alarms in her head telling her this was stupid and she should never even dare say what she was about to.

Lisa's arms tightened around her.

"They uh… I'm pretty sure they were from an alternate Earth. And I have their memories. No, not just… not just that. I lived through their lives. Start to finish. That's what fucked me up and sent me to the asylum. Living something like a hundred lives in a few seconds during my trigger vision. And I got attached to the same people they did as I lived their life through their eyes, you know? I've lost… brothers, friends, wives and daughters and sons. I lost myself too. I call myself Taylor Hebert, but I'm more of a… fucked up ball made of something like a hundred different people and creatures, forced back into a shape roughly resembling what Taylor Hebert was before she triggered." She confessed, for the first time saying it out loud, then let her chest quiver with emotion as silent tears ran down her face from her cold, empty eyes.

"That's... heavy. Christ... It makes a lot of sense, now- now that I think about it. I was, uh, starting to suspect my power wasn't as off as I'd thought about w-what it said. That's... holy f-fuck that is beyond messed up. So much worse than my stuff. I'm so sorry. Even if I'm not sure what we're saying sorry for." Lisa mumbled, and Taylor laughed, a wet, slightly unhinged thing as she hugged Lisa tighter, and let her jaw tremble, thousands of faces rushing through her mind.

Yone smiling as he bent down by her side to teach her how to hold a sword, the very thing she would eventually kill him with, soft wheat fields swaying in the wind behind him, wind that called to her, to Yasuo, The Unforgiven.

Salmiel and Khanara, offering her, Riven The Exile, smuggled booze in the barracks with an easy smile, reminding her that the Invasion of Ionia was but a step away, that their death might come by morrow, unknowing in how prophetic their words would be, but only for themselves.

Ghufnar and Nirem, stout, hard-faced warriors that had followed her from her first trembling speech as a teenager in the howling mountains of the Freljord to her very last speech as a Queen in the crumbling chasm of the Howling Abyss while the void watchers broke through their restraints and the walls of ice came tumbling down as if the blue sky was breaking above them, their beards streaked with gray from age, men she'd grown up with by her side.

Names, faces, places. Five, ten, a hundred.

She grit her trembling jaw, feeling the thin barrier that disconnected her from the jumble of memories to her newly crafted self thin and turn translucent, her fingers clawing at Lisa's back as she choked her sobs down into silent spasms.

If she was squeezing Lisa too tightly, if she was leaning on her a little too much despite being the taller one, if she was shaking like a leaf too stubborn to make a sound as it crumpled, Lisa didn't comment on it.

"Man… we're both such a fucking mess, aren't we?" Lisa sighed, and Taylor nodded into the side of her head.

She agreed.

She was such a mess that even now, she was thinking of things she had to do, reasons she should not waste time on this... whatever this was. Bonding experience, venting?

"If you were serious though... I'll take the promotion. You can be the serious, mean, older one. Fits with having a couple hundred years of memories. And I can be the smug, smart brat of a little sister." Lisa suggested.

"T-t-t-then we c- can play hou-house?" Taylor tried for a joke, warbled and stuttering with sniffles and shudders as it was.

They devolved into a wet giggling fit agaisnt each other.

Notes:

you think updating twice in a day is my limit?

you fool.

you fucking buffoon.

you subhuman troglodyte.

i have no limit.

my words are many and my coffee beans even more.

my power is limitless and as chaotic as my sleeping hours.

you structure your sleep like a fool while i drop dead on my keyboard and wake up in my kitchen two hours later eating bread like a true sigma male, already back on the grind to write nerdy stories on the internet for no particular reason.

you write words, but I?

the words enslave me and force themselves into existence upon these rambling ragged pages.

we are not the same.

anyways, might upload a third time today idk, the coffee is keeping me alive rn

and I know, i know, plot should move forward, we have shit to do, but i dont wanna skimp out on character relationships and developments just to write a rushed but rather soulless fight story ;d

next chap is chore stuff, chaps after that will be first day as ward, then canary meetup.

Also a bit of this chap Abt the kill order stuff was taken off wildbows reddit answers.

Chapter 20

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

The walk back home was somber but relaxed.

They'd even held hands, until Lisa noted that they probably looked like lesbians and they were kinda walking through Empire territory at the moment, so that ended pretty quickly.

Still, by the time they'd arrived home and relaxed a bit in the living room, it seemed both she and Lisa wanted to get onto topics less personal and emotional, having gotten all the ugly sobbing and sniffling out of their system, so she asked her what girl she was looking for, and Lisa told her, after appealing mildly disturbed at how easily Taylor had eavesdropped on her mere feet away.

Emily.

Or Spitfire if one didn't want to skirt the rules.

Her pattern was patternless, in a way that indicated more panic and confusion than anything actually deliberate. She was chaotic because she had no idea what she was doing, and in a rather ironic way, that was what had kept her alive and unaffiliated for the past month or so.

It did not seem like that would last much longer.

The way she and Lisa saw it, the girl's options to keep it that way kept closing.

If anything, they could guess the only reason the girl hadn't gone to the PRT yet was because she didn't know that they'd likely just give her a slap-on-the-wrist probation before inducting her into their ranks, probably thinking she'd be thrown into prison or something instead.

And while a bit cruel to think like that, she could leverage that thought.

The problem was waiting for her to commit a robbery again.

That subject brought them to a related subject, which was money. Lisa said she kept most of hers stashed around the city or put into a secret bank account by a banker rogue called Number Man.

All in all, Lisa had three thousand dollars to play with, from three different stashes, and about double that in her ghost-bank account, which she couldn't access until she made a phone call to him because she lost her card to his black-market bank.

Which somehow worked through bank cards. And was accepted in all known banks on the US continent.

How the fuck he pulled that off, she had absolutely no idea, and neither did Lisa, for once. Still, exceedingly convenient.

There was only one small issue.

"Twenty percent of intake is taken as a fee? Twenty? " She emphasized, incredulous.

Normal banks paid you to put your fucking money in them, even if they were like, two percent annual. His wanted twenty percent of all the shit she put in it?

It wasn't a crippling amount, but it was a lot.

Lisa shrugged, flipping through the news channels nonchalantly, her now-ginger hair bouncing about with the motion.

"Yeah. It's a lot, but it's convenient and leaves no paper trail."

And just like that, she was sold. Lisa kept talking though.

"Unless you've got a master of money laundering lying about, and you're not afraid to have all your cash in physical form, it's worth it to avoid the IRS chasing after you."

She pursed her lips.

"And he's really trustworthy? No sketchy business, no randomly locking your account to empty it for himself?"

Lisa shook her head.

"Unless he got a multibillionaire to make an account, it would never be worth even the small blip it would put on his reputation. Most people would rather keep steady income than scam people for big bucks a couple times before people catch on and never deal with them again. And this guy's old. I think he's been running his services since the early two thousands. So, yeah, he's trustworthy enough. And if you don't want to put too much money in one account and make him tempted or something, you can make as many accounts as you want." Lisa said, the droning of a news reporter in the background seeming to relax her for some reason.

Stale coffee wafted into her nose from their kitchen as her dad walked past them, upstairs.

If her dad found something weird about them talking cape stuff, he didn't show it or seem to care. If anything, he was avoiding it.

Likely trying to forget it all. It was quite in character for him, truly.

"Damn. Okay. I'm making an account then." She mumbled, and pulled out her main burner phone. "Do you have his number somewhere?"

"314-159-265-359." Lisa smoothly recited, still sounding bored, and Taylor stared at her.

"Why do you remember all of that? Also that's twelve digits, not eleven."

"It's the pi number. That Greek letter, in maths?" Lisa said, and Taylor's face scrunched up.

"That is so cheesy."

"I know right?"

She called it anyway.

A mere two hours later, she went to a drop-off point as a limping old man.

She sat beside the man in the red puffy jacket, and sighed like an old man resting his weary bones.

"The space worm made of crystals likely tastes like apples." She said, seemingly to herself.

The man glanced at her blankly, before nodding.

"I suppose so."

He left, leaving behind a small paper bag.

She pocketed it, and walked into the closest alley.

As a Legend, whatever she held could be transported between forms, assuming they were similar enough. Turning into a dragon Legend for example would just make her card vanish. Just… deleted from existence.

She'd tested stuff like that in her bunker for a bit.

It was a bit strange, like the old robed man tried to go for convenience but just couldn't quite get it to work before he gave up, but she appreciated the efforts regardless.

This also meant that she thankfully didn't have to do some complicated process to store the card. Flash back to herself, shove it into her wallet, shift back, fly away.

Simple.

Lisa had decided to take the day to finally hunt down those stashes she had, her paranoia about them being watched thoroughly calmed by now. The one hundred and four impact grenades she had in her pockets in the form of red glowing cards, those likely helped with making her feel safe.

It was a surprisingly warm thought.

And Taylor had a lot of shit to do, herself, so she went on with her mid-day chores entirely separate.

Primarily, moving stuff into her bunker.

Firstly, it was simple things. She went to thrift stores, she filled up the camping backpack, she went to the junkyards, in the wood section where people would toss out half-broken or unwanted furniture, and with every Teleport, her bunker slowly began to fill up around the edges, at least enough to where she could actually do some work.

A flat wooden table with chipped edges, a really old wicker-wrapped chair, a sagging armchair that she barely managed to get off the floor, and then cleaning all of those up, and creating an eater plant, a biological trashbin, essentially, which she shoved up in the corner to consume all the junk and detritus that were a result of her cleaning.

And just in general, the waste she'd be making while Tinkering, when she eventually got to that.

Then tupperware, sponges, general household items she could come up with that might be needed…

It still wasn't even close to what she'd need to make some Tinker-tier weapons, but that was fine, she was expecting it all to be rather slow.

It took about three hours. By six PM, she had cleaned the table, the chair, the old, slightly tilted armchair, and was left with the unavoidable pile of stuff crammed into another corner, and a choice.

Making some kind of suit.

She had planned on making one for the Wards, but she honestly only expected to be with them for as long as it took to absorb information on protocols and how they operated and thought, plant a mole or two, get somewhat friendly with the Wards, and use their gyms and sparring mats as much as she could, because while dumbbells and a bench could do a full body workout, it was far from optimal and shadowboxing just wasn't quite the same without the threat of hurt to force her mind to really commit her combat movements into memory.

For all she knew, she might only need to be there for a week to achieve all that, gym aside. She couldn't work on the assumption of a month or two. She just didn't know.

And frankly, she did not much care about what her Ward image would be like. It would be a pitifully short career that she was exploiting almost exclusively for information. She'd debug and burn any trackers that might be in her suit, and that would be it. It just wasn't worth the effort.

So, in order to conserve enough energy for herself to not have a headache again when she woke up tomorrow, she decided to just make two silk bodysleeves, one for herself and one for Lisa, made by horrific, magical abominations that roughly resembled black widow spiders.

A silk armor bodysleeve which she and Lisa could easily wear their costumes over, instead of whatever barely-bulletproof kevlar weave they'd put in her cape clothes.

With her current direction decided, she turned into Elise, The Spider Queen.

The spider legs on her back shuddered as she got up and stretched, feeling oddly content like this. And tall.

She turned to the wooden table, and after a brief moment of thought, swapped to the Rune of Sorcery for the 'Perfect Focus' effect.

Was this thing addictive? It felt like she just shot up every single concentration drug she could think of in one go.

Now, what silk was the strongest, but least exhausting?

The more magic she pumped into her spiders, the tougher, faster, and stronger they'd be, and the tougher their silk. She could also modulate how large they'd be when she created them, somewhat independently from the rest of the side effects of pouring more mana into her summons.

The question here was essentially how much she wanted to exert herself.

A pounding headache, shy of a migraine, that sounded like something she could deal with and would go away by tomorrow morning.

So, say… maybe just twice as tough on the silk department? Normal silk suits were already stab, cut, and bullet-proof. Twice as tough? It might even stop one of those huge rifle bullets she'd seen on TV movies once, those that were about as big as a finger.

So, perfect, assuming it wasn't a shot to the unprotected head.

With a wave of a clawed hand, a thick, red-black miasma spewed out from her fingers and palm, shifting into shapes and lumps before it even hit the table, and when it did, it dissipated, leaving behind a person-sized blanket of a few hundred little black widow spiders, all of the same thumb-sized variety, crammed onto the tabletop.

"Shoo, kids."

They skittered to the edges of the table, cheerily chirping and hissing, rolling and jumping onto each other, then turning to stare at the free space they left.

All things which normal spiders didn't do, contrary to strange fantasy novels.

But these did, because they weren't normal spiders, and were the indirect spawn of a dark demigod spider as large as Leviathan.

Fuck Vilemaw. Absolute dickhead. Even if he had quite the groovy moves when he decided he was in a good mood and there was a bard captive in the feed dungeon. She'd never forget that sight. It was too absurd to forget. And damn it, his shuffle game was good.

If he hadn't given Elise her abilities, he'd be even higher on her mental shit-list of Runeterra. She could never take spiders seriously after him.

Another wave of her hand, another spew of black-red miasma, another couple hundred thumb-sized black-widow imitations that shifted and spun to look at her with their beady, faintly luminescent red eyes. Thankfully, Elise wasn't a total diva, and had gotten quite a bit into weaving, as a curiosity. Living in her underground, dark palace would occasionally get boring, and she still had the tastes of a noble. Whether to lure victims or to get funds, the woman and her spiderlings made a lot of silk in her days.

She pursed her lips, staring at her spiderlings.

The thing about these little shitheads, was that they really were not spiders, not real ones. She couldn't stress that enough. Every single one of them was a magical familiar of sorts, created to be summoned and killed at her whim. Technically, the only limitation being how much mana she had. And while there was a strange sort of hivemind going on here, with her being able to use all of their far-too-clear eyes to see, and access all their memories, and individually tell apart each spider, they were all somewhat autonomous and intelligent if she wanted them to be. Telepathic link felt like a weak word for it, but it worked.

She'd kind of missed these assholes. A little too much, if she was honest.

"C'mere." She ordered, and extended a finger down.

Like a jumping spider, a single black widow hopped onto her pointer finger, waving its front legs and chirping.

The first one.

Miranda, Elise had named her, before realizing she could theoretically make a million of them and still tell them apart without a name needed, and stopped naming them.

She couldn't help but smile.

"How have you been, you shitty little rascal? How long since you've bitten someone's ankles?"

The legs drooped, then the spider wiggled its body side to side like a stiff dance move, trying to imitate a headshake, ideas and impressions throwing themselves back at her mind, running in a parallel tract she could observe.

"A century or so before the end?" She guessed, and the spider wiggled its butt and head up and down like a see-saw in a nod.

"Oomph, that's rough. Gonna have to set you loose on some poor bastard soon to unwind a bit." She murmured, and felt a giant wave of mock-jealousy and envy roll over her from the table.

She rolled her eyes with a smile. She couldn't help it.

Some Legends had pets that came with them, as a sort of conjoined package, like Quinn and Valor, the scout and her eagle, but those things weren't capable of growing. The animals, that is. They were just an imitation, a perfect projection maybe, so while she could enjoy their company, it did not feel like they were the same, and it did not feel like they had much, if any, real connection to her, Taylor Hebert.

These things could learn and remember new things. More importantly, they weren't Elise's. They adapted to her the first time she tested Elise, almost flawlessly. They had all of the Legend's memories, hers, and Elise's. And they hadn't changed or stagnated one bit, the little guys. So, sue her. She liked her spiders too much. They were her fucking children.

Well, Elise's children. But also hers now. They were vicious as shit and twice as murderous when they were Elise's, but that bitch was dead now, so she could let them be as silly as she wished them to be.

"That goes for all of you, shush. You'll get to bite some ankles eventually." She reassured, and lowered her hand for Miranda to jump off and join her sisters and brothers.

"But for now…" She trailed off, visualizing what she wanted in her head, even adding faint traces of patterns on the whole thing, visualizing with slightly-creepy focus how Lisa's figure and proportions looked like, how hers looked like.

"Make these, if you can? In say… hm… Is seven hours enough?" She asked, and cracked open a pained eye to her swarm.

She watched her spiderlings curl into a ball and roll themselves into the middle of the table, before forming a small circle in the center. A single spider skittered into the middle, and then began making odd gesticulations with its front legs as it waved them around and chittered and hissed at the observing masses, who chittered back, pretending to have a heated debate on the topic.

She had to turn away lest her smile and building snickers turn into a laugh.

Curse her pounding fucking headache. Her kids were trying to make her feel better and she couldn't even laugh at their antics.

"Alright, alright, enough theater, chop chop, get to work." She said, and went to go sit in the armchair and meditate to slow down how fast the headache would build.

She'd already expended all the power she was going to, but even not doing anything as a Legend tended to expend some of her soul power, and her soul was for some fucking reason attuned to her mind instead of her heart.

Probably because the summon core replaced her heart with a disco-ball looking thing, but yeah, not pleasant. She'd still have preferred to have intense heartburn instead.

It was a negligible amount, but seven hours of negligible drain was still seven hours.

It was three and a half hours into their work that the messages she was getting from her swarm began distracting her, and she blinked out of her meditation, staring at the chittering swarms half-way done with climbing onto each other and hopping around to make the suits.

They had access to her memories, so it wasn't exactly impossible to consider they might do this as a joke, but she was still struck between bursting into laughter and sputtering in disbelief.

"Are you guys seriously - hey! No unionizing! Back to work!" She scolded, mock-scowling at the swarm teased of forming protests by sealing all the juice bottles in her fridge shut, her lips wiggling into a smile despite her attempts otherwise.

The rascals could sense her mirth, unfortunately.

A spider jumped out of the fray, waving its strand of silk in the air as it mentally projected ' viva la resistance!' in a valiant, silent war cry, and dramatically threw its string onto the table. Or the floor, for them.

The spiders all paused, raising their legs in the air, hissing and hopping in support like an angry mob.

She couldn't help it.

She let out the most undignified snurk-snort sound she'd ever heard, and clamped her hands over her mouth, grimacing in pain as she desperately tried to choke her laughter down and not agitate her headache, a losing battle she realized, when tears of mirth began to flow down her red face.

It only got worse when the spiderlings pretended to have a worker's rally on her half-finished suits, making a platform using their bodies while Miranda sat in the center, waving her front legs in anger and stomping to emphasize her chirps.

"Gg-geahah- gehhtt-" She trailed off into a groaning, laughing wheeze, then gave up, just mentally projecting to tell them to get back to work, for real this time.

Seeing that she was serious, the little show they put on for her amusement immediately stopped, and like a well-oiled, creepy machine with about eight and a half thousand legs, they began to weave again.

She really loved these little guys. They were one of the most unique Legend interactions she'd checked so far, and with how funny she found spiders to be, they were perfect stress relief. Even if they were technically a part of her, and she technically just made herself laugh, it was pretty… whatever. Nobody here to judge her for it.

Shame she couldn't keep them out while using any other Legend.

Oh well, Sile should have made that black widow box order by now, she could just take those over, give them commands, mutate them a bit, and she'd have roughly the same result, without the ability to resummon them if they died, nor the individuality and semi-intelligence. Good enough for her purposes.

She swapped to the Rune of Inspiration, and settled back down, mildly brainstorming as she let the clicking and shuffling calm her down.

As she slowly got her lungs working right again, she couldn't help but smile, and wonder how Lisa would react to all this.

Maybe she could prank her with the spiders somehow…?

Wait, no, Thinker. Anything other than a jumpscare would instantly make Lisa realize.

Damn.

And bless the Inspiration Rune, because she just realized she could have made Lisa a Brute 1, permanently, with just Lulu alone, and instead just went for a disguise without even considering it. Another bullet point to the list of tasks.

Her head was too fucking swamped…

She had to delegate a bit.

And she had four inactive minions.

Once she was done with the suit, she'd give them some light tasks to do for her, before giving Lisa the more important ones that her power could help her with.

Back to meditating for now. It did help, for some reason.

The light was annoying, and she couldn't swap to Zyra without removing her spiderlings.

Miranda broke off the swarm and skittered up to her face, calmly moving across her closed eyes and weaving a blindfold, having noticed that the light-plants above somewhat bothered her.

Which, of course she did, semi-hivemind and all that.

Both the light tapping on her skin and the tingly bits of silk were calming, so she urged her forth. One spider didn't make a difference, there was something like a thousand of them on the table there.

The Inspiration Rune brought even more ideas forward, and she was stuck wondering if it was worth it to meditate rather than brainstorm.

With tomorrow being a Sunday and her last day before going into the Wards, meeting her dad's mechanic associate, and finally starting on a proper diet and exercice regimen, she decided to just go for brainstorming. Tomorrow would be a rest day regardless.

She would likely regret this by then, but that was for future her to complain about.