Taylor had been dreading returning to school after the holidays. The bitches three had backed off and mostly left her alone the last week before school let out for Christmas. On the surface this was great, but in reality it meant they were planning something, some escalation.
She trod through the halls, regularly being shoulder checked or pushed in one direction or the other. The bullying wasn't limited to the ringleaders, but was a student body wide endeavour at this point. Sure there were a few students who didn't partake, but even the upper years and lower years would get in on it when they could. Some of it was buying favor from the trio, and some of it was that she was so far down the totem poll that it was just easy.
She finally made it to her locker when something rancid hit her. She started to struggle with her gag reflex. Her eyes watering. She put in her locker combination, each spin being interrupted by a near reflexive vomit. It took several attempts to get the code in. When the door open the gagging overtook her and she let lose into the pile of rotten filth and debris that filled the bottom third of her locker.
She felt someone grabbing her hair into a pony tail she tried to turn to confront the individual when her head slammed forward into the metal inner wall leaving her stunned. Then the rest of her body followed into the locker after a firm push to her back.
Once she recovered from the momentary incapacitation she started yelling and screaming. The voices of the crowds could be heard slowly moving away from her. Laughter and joking about the stench could just be made out.
As she banged on the door and yelled the hallway settled into silence and she was trapped.
Seconds blurred into minutes and into hours. She heard occasional waves of students, she thinks at least. It was hard to tell what she was actually experiencing and what she was hallucinating.
In between the vomiting, retching, and screaming she saw many things. A fiery hellscape, rows and rows of people strung up and crucified. She saw a desert that stretched as far as the eye could see desperately wishing for a few drops of water. She saw the ocean raging in a storm. She saw hundreds of different sites.
Then in one moment she was no longer trapped in place. She still reeked, and was covered in the refuse from her locker. She stood in a park, one that reminded her of Central Park as shown in various TV shows and movies. Birds chirped as they flew overhead and right in front of her sat an old man. He looked fairly normal, decently dressed with a wind breaker over a collared shirt with a pair of slacks. Looking neither rich, nor poor, neither strong, nor weak. He was at a chess table sitting on a rickety old chair. The pieces were arrayed on the table looking as if he had recently finished a game. Meanwhile he sat facing sideways breaking off bits of bread and throwing it out into a flock of pigeons.
"Where am I?" she questioned.
"That's a hard question to answer," the old man spoke in dulcet tones.
"But I was in my locker, and now, now I'm here." she half got out somewhere between a mutter, a whimper, and utter disbelief. "What is… what is here?" She finally managed to get out.
"Here is a meeting place. It is both my domain, the shores of dreams, and at the same time your locker. It was a place I created so that you and I could talk. Come sit down Taylor Annette Hebert." He said as he waved towards the seat opposite him at the chess table. The way he said her name felt like she was struck by lightning. Like something was cutting to her very core.
Taylor took the seat and reflexively started copying him and setting the pieces on their spots on the table. The pieces felt real, the cool touch of stone beneath her fingers. The chair she sat on wobbled as she moved. This all was so real, more so than any of the other hallucinations she had had.
"Come lets play, you can have white."
Moving the pieces helped. It grounded her into the moment, let the smell of her clothes wash away into the background of the situation. It removed her from that stark mental fear of the locker.
"Why am I here?" She finally asked after several moves.
"I wished to see you in person. To speak with you, and get a measure of you."
"Why, I'm a nobody. Just bullybait. Someone to abuse and be picked on by everyone else. Hell I'm sitting here covered in vile trash and rubbish."
"Ahh, but that isn't what I see." He said as he moved a rook. Completely at peace with the situation.
"What do you see?" she retorted. Frustration and surliness seeping into her words.
"I see someone who can change the world. Someone who has the capability to do great and yet terrible things. I see someone who is on a path that if unchanged will lead them to be one of the greatest heros of the world, yet at the same time one of the most reviled villains."
"Me? I'm no great hero, I'm no Alexandria, Legend, or Eidolon. Hell, I'm not even an Armsmaster or a Triumph. I'm just a girl who gets picked on and tortured every day."
"You are just a girl who has one of the greatest destinies and one of the greatest fates of her generation. One who if left unchanged will certainly accomplish both, or neither. I fear not which is worse."
"Destiny, fate?"
"The greatest pinnacle of good, or evil, respectively that you can accomplish. Not to place too great of a burden on your shoulders but the fate of the world rests on yours so to speak."
"I… what does one even begin to say to that. This is all bullshit, some hallucination brought on by the panic attack I'm having. Next thing you are going to tell me that I'm going to beat Alexandria."
"You could, if you remain on the path before you unchanged defeat Alexandria in combat."
"Why, why are you telling me all of this?"
"Because as I said if you remain on your path unchanged you will accomplish both great and terrible things. Luckily I've traded a few favors with my counterpart and have reached an… arrangement."
"What kind of arrangement?"
"Well first and foremost he has agreed to let me bring you here to have this discussion. Second he has agreed to let me offer you a choice."
"What kind of choice?"
"Do you wish to do more. To have a chance to rise above your fate, to accomplish just great things, to not become one of the greatest terrors of the world."
"I mean, that is a bit of a leading question. How could I say no to that. Of course I wish to accomplish great things, of course I wish to not become a terror on the world."
"You are uniquely situated that I can make this offer to you. You see several generations back your great great grandmother wasn't human. She was part divine. That has left a trace of that in your blood."
"I'm sorry, she was what?"
"A nephillim, the child of a mortal and an angel."
"So my great something grandmother was a nephelhelm?"
"Nephallim, my child, nephallim. That gives me the ability to offer you something. Do you wish to ascend, to become an angel, the servant of the divine on earth."
"An angel? You are offering to make me into an angel."
"It is something that is possible, rare though, only having happened on a handful of other occasions in history."
"What would be expected of me?"
"To fulfil your destiny, to care for your charges, to be an agent of the symphony."
"I'll have to give up my Dad, to give up my school?"
"I don't know. I can't tell you what you should and shouldn't do. For freewill still exists. Your mortal life will be a good role, a good cover for your divine actions. I merely suggest you keep the two aspects of your life separate where you can. So that agents of hell don't strike out at your family in retaliation for your actions in service to the divine."
"So I should be a cape," she said with a bit of a chuckle. "I have a crazy old man telling me that I can become an angel and go out and be a cape. That I'll save the world."
"No, I said you have the destiny, the capability of saving the world. Something that wont change if you take me up on this offer or not. That will always be your destiny."
"And my Fate?"
"To become one of the most reviled beings in history."
"Yet if I take you up on this, I can avoid that?"
"It will open doors to allow you to avoid it, but nothing is guaranteed. For even the most brilliant of angels still can fall."
Taylor continued the chess game for several moves while thinking this over.
"How long do I have to decide?"
The old man looked down at his watch. He hmmed and hawed for a moment before looking back. "Oh about five minutes, and then it will be too late. The parasite will have taken hold and I could not make this offer to anyone beholden to such a creature."
"The parasite?"
"The powers, being a parahuman, the shard, the agent, it has many names."
"I'll become a parahuman if I say no?"
"Almost certainly, for you could neither accomplish your destiny nor your fate without some amount of power. Either what I'm offering or what the entity will force upon you."
"Fine, I'll do it. I'll take your offer."
The man simply smiled. Moved his queen and said "Checkmate."
"Wait, you never did tell me your name."
"You can call me Yves."
And everything went black.