MY FAKE GIRLFRIEND IS A VIGILANTE?
romantic teenage drama story with violence as inspired by heathers
AUTHOR'S NOTE: Hey, so, this kinda spiraled out of control for me and became it's own thing. This was originally just a one-shot idea that I had, with some varying AU elements, and... well, now we're here, 3 establishing chapters in, and with me intending to write more of it. I hope you enjoy what I have available.
Additional thanks to lyrisey for help with putting this together and being there to bump ideas off of. You should really go read all of her stuff.
NULL-TRACK 0.1
There were four of them. The guy at the front of the group was bald but hadn't quite accepted it yet, tufts of off-brown hair curling against his nape, frail and wiry. He wore a wifebeater, which was pretty on-theme, all to show off the laundry list of intricate fascist artwork on his arms. He wore, more or less, every bit of Nazi iconography that Taylor had personally seen, from the swastika to the black sun to even the goddamn German eagle.
The others were less open about it, and a fair bit younger, the youngest of which looked... well, actually, she'd seen him at Winslow not a few days ago. That'd be weird to think about, ugh. Anyway, youngest at probably fifteen, sixteen at most, and the oldest out of the three being about twenty-five, by her measure. They all wore more conventional clothing, long-sleeves for starters, though all of them had black and red as their colours.
Well, that much was to be expected, they were the E88.
At the far other end of the alley she was peeking over, a girl in her mid-twenties was huddled against the far wall. She was pretty, a curly crop of black hair and warm brown skin, with big expressive eyes and a nice, stubborn set to her jaw. She was, of course, looking completely terrified out of her mind, but... well, Taylor couldn't really blame her. Things rarely went well for pretty non-white girls cornered by the E88, and from the way they were leering at her, this didn't really seem to be the day that would change.
Tugging at her belt, Taylor thumbed the dispenser near the back of her hip, a dart silently dropping out of the opening and into the palm of her hand. A quick glance over the syringe-like, exposed glass belly, capped at the far end with a metal stud, filled with a viscous purple-blue liquid, told her this wasn't the greatest dart to get out of her dispenser. She'd really have to figure out a way to sort the thing, she never could remember in what order she put the darts in.
Blinking at the scream, Taylor glanced back down over the edge. Shit, they'd started to approach. She had to work on that too, it wasn't like she intentionally let herself get lost in her head but—well, she was pretty sure she had untreated ADHD or something. Not that she'd tell anyone that, no, the erratic bursts of thought were good for what she did. What she was about to do.
Flipping the dart around, holding the sharp stem between her index finger and thumb - you could poke an eye out with it, after all - Taylor slid further towards the edge, pushing herself up onto her knees. She loomed out over it, reared her arm back, and could almost imagine the little line that connected her hand to the back of the bald one's head, though it wasn't quite that either. Perks of her powers, she supposed; better aiming could never be a downside to something.
She threw, arm flashing out in a practiced whip. The little purple vial-dart shot forward, her eyes quickly losing track of it until, with a sharp crack, it shattered across the smooth head of the chief Nazi. He squealed, a bit like a pig, only for the noise to get lost over the chemical slurry she'd injected into the vial-needle rapidly expanding into a sludge-like bloom that quickly flooded over the other three who had followed, pushing one guy onto his back, covering the left half of his body, while the other two were shortly thereafter forced to the ground as the sludge collected over their hips, hauling them down. The sludge itself was foul-smelling - she would know, considering how long it'd taken to build a working pressure chamber - and a sort of inky-black that rarely bodes well for the health of a person who was exposed to it for too long.
Eh, they could deal with it.
Tightening her fingers around the lip of the roof, Taylor pulled herself free from it, shortly dropping into a free dive. Her body-suit - well, more of a frame - clicked, little mechanical servos near her feet and legs shifting into preparatory mode as the ground rushed up to meet her. Yet, with little more than a thud, she landed, the accompanying screech of the metal impact dampeners taking the blow was a bit hard on the ear, sure, but it was better than having both of her legs shatter on impact.
She had an image to keep, after all.
Taylor pulled herself into a full stand, waving towards the pretty lady at the other end. She, apparently still a bit dazed, raised her hand unthinkingly to wave back. She could work with that.
"I'll call this in, okay?" Taylor asked, or, well, yelled, mostly because she had to talk over the litany of slurs the bald one was starting to bark at her. She just hoped the sludge got into his mouth, she was pretty sure it was mildly poisonous. "You can just go, you've had a rough night, yeah?"
The woman staggered, then awkwardly nodded. She looked around for a few moments, almost bewildered, before stumbling forward and then to the side of Taylor, passing by while using the alley wall to support herself. A few seconds later, the woman was gone, walking down the sidewalk, her footsteps growing ever-quieter.
Taylor felt a part of herself relax, shoulders slumping back. A smile pulled over her face, though it was obscured beneath the threadbare scarf she'd thrown around her lower face all those months ago, never quite building up the nerve to just wear the domino mask, even if it would probably work well enough to hide her identity.
She lived for these moments.
Pulling at her belt, Taylor pulled the heft of one of her spears free from a loop. It was telescoping, unfolding as she pressed her thumb into one of the clicky buttons she'd added to this version. It extended out to about the normal length of a javelin, the pointed end little more than a conal piece of metal that gave it a passing resemblance to a pencil.
Turning to the bald one first, Taylor smiled apologetically at him. "You know how it is," she said easily, maneuvering herself around so she could get just the right angle. Her weapons never worked very well as melee—good in a pinch, but prone to misfires. She'd spent hours putting these things together, and she was hardly about to waste them through some arbitrary failure that would no doubt only happen if she just tried to skewer him with it. "Gotta keep a reputation and all."
The man's face paled. Maybe it was the get-up, maybe it was the spear, maybe it was her voice, god only knows, there'd been a few videos on trashy websites like the Daily Sturm with her voice on it. 'Shrike, the anti-white vigilante'; yeah, sure, buddy. She wouldn't say she became something of a bogeyman, no, that was a biiiit much, but she was pretty sure she was on every single skinhead chudlord's shitlist at this point, not that she minded all that much.
She leaned back, cocked her arm, and then threw. The javelin, with a shock of noise, exploded from the butt end, a small payload of explosive firing it forward with the same stopping power of your average high-yield compound crossbow. With a satisfying sort of wet thud, it hit, ripping the bald fucker's body right out of the sludge she'd encased him in, pinning him to the alley wall by the heft of her spear. He started screaming, pig-squeals that drew a groan out of Taylor, one of those awful stress headaches pounding at the front of her head. Why did she always get the loud ones?
Whatever. One down, three to go. She just had to get through this, ignore the loud squealing. She could do it, he wasn't that bad, he just kept screaming. Loudly. She could do it, she totally could, she couldn't do it, nope, fuck this, she could not handle his fucking screaming.
Turning, Taylor ripped a fistful of the sludge off of the pile, stomped over, and slammed the sticky shit right onto his face, smearing it a few times for good measure, but avoiding his nose just to be safe. Admittedly, it took a few seconds to wipe the shit off of her good hand, and in the process, she gunked up her pants, and those would take hours to fucking clean off and... and, just. No. Ruined. They fucking ruined it.
Pulling a long knife from a loop in her belt, Taylor trotted over to the oldest of the lot and flung the thing straight down, through the bone in the guy's hip. This one, at least, just screamed for a few seconds, writhing, half-submerged in the sludge garbage around the left side of his body, before devolving into wet whimpers.
Right, right. Now onto... she wanted to say Cameron. He looked like a Cameron, a lot like one, actually. Yeah, she was getting Cameron vibes from him.
"I think I know you," Taylor babbled thoughtlessly. It was kinda risky, but it wasn't like she spoke to him—Emma didn't hang out with those types of people, and Taylor only really hung out with Emma to begin with. Well, that and Sophia, on occasion. "You look kinda familiar so, ah, I'll let you choose: right or left?"
Cameron, probably, who shared her math class... probably, and who was just your everyday teenager, tried to spit on her. Well, tried, succeeded, whatever, she had to wipe his spit from her face with the hem of her sleeve, the rough fabric scratching against dry, sensitive skin. Winter kinda sucked like that.
Taylor pulled her second of five collapsable spears from her hip, letting it extend out to its full size before smiling down at the dumb piece of shit beneath her. "Both it is, then."
Shit, shitshitshitshit. "Hey, mom!"
"Taylor, where are you?" Mom's voice was that sort of frigid 'I-will-fuck-you-up-if-you-lie' that she usually reserved for when Dad burned dinner.
Uuuuh... "Emma's..?"
"No, you're not. I had Danny check, you know, your father, who nearly had a panic attack because his daughter wasn't in her bed when he went to wake her up this morning for the trip they were going to take to Boston. You know, the one he's been really excited about?"
Taylor glanced at her face in the mirror, reaching up with one of the few remaining unstained wet wipes to scrub at some of the blood spatter that had gotten caught beneath her ear. Ugh, it was just her fucking luck she'd managed to hit an artery, she'd even had to sit there with the dude and apply pressure and make sure he wouldn't bleed the fuck out and then the police had been all 'you can't do that to people, that's illegal' and, really, what a fucking mess. She'd gotten away, sure, but she was pretty sure she was on the PRT's shitlist now too.
She could add Mom to that too, and probably Dad. He'd look at her like she'd just ruined his favourite coffee cup because she'd forgotten about the trip to go see the boats in Boston. She didn't even like boats, she liked projectiles and being a cape and, y'know, fuckin' people up. Not that people knew about that last bit, or the other two bits. Really, it was a wonder how she'd kept all of those secrets, god only knows rubbing your face down for blood five minutes away from your irate parents probably isn't in the "101 guide to teenagers" book that she'd gotten for her fifteenth birthday by a well meaning but somewhat vacant aunt by the name of Gertrude six months ago.
Ah, fuck it. In for a penny. "I was at Sophia's."
"Which."
Shit. "...Hess?" That was her last name, right? Or was it Hussie? Oh fucking hell she should really just make a list for shit like this.
There was a short pause. "If you're dating around again, I'd like for you to ask permission before you stay over at someone's house like that."
Oh, oh. So she believed she was just, y'know, having sex with people. Wow, that was almost as bad as her figuring out that she moonlighted as a hyperviolent vigilante when her back was turned, holy shit.
In the end, though...
Sure, let's go with that. "I will. I'll be home in a bit, is Dad still..?"
"You will go on that trip," Mom said, her voice regaining a little bit of that warmth. "Honestly, Taylor, you don't need to sneak around about this sort of thing. I'm sure we would love to meet your partners, be they male or fe—"
"Yeah, not having this conversation," she interrupted, before slamming her thumb onto the 'end call' button on her phone. Breathing out, Taylor reached back, pulled at some of the short curls around her head, just to be sure that nothing was bloody and icky and whatever else. Breathing out a sigh of relief, Taylor dumped the wet wipes into a pile, rummaged through her pockets for her lighter and resisting the urge to smoke - god only knows she needed that added to 'shit we're upset at you about' - and lit the entire damn pile on fire.
Ceramic didn't catch easily, but even if it did, she wasn't about to stick around to watch the public bathroom go up in flames.
B-SIDE
Sophia was bored. So, so fucking bored, like, you could not fundamentally quantify the level of absolute bullshit boredom she was experiencing. Like a fucking event horzion, it swallowed up everyth—
"Shadow Stalker, please pay attention," Halberd-up-his-ass said, looking at her from where they were projecting a few images on the screen. Okay, so when had they turned on the fuckin' slasher movie? That sure as shit wasn't their normal weekly meetings about shitty new drug rates and Piggy's eternal disappointment with them.
"To return to our topic at hand," Armsmaster said, motioning back at the screen. A few images moved, taking up the majority of it, most of them of bloodied weapons obviously taken from an evidence room, alongside a few images of gangbangers with bandages. Above it all, in those glossy, PRT-issued letters, was 'Shrike', written in all capitals. "Shrike, vigilante. She's been on our radar for about three months now, with up to a month before that of possible action due to varying and somewhat inconsistent reports."
The images changed, finally showing Shrike herself. She was lanky, tall, in a vaguely familiar way that made Sophia feel a bit oddly uneasy, almost like deja vu, but like if deja vu was because you were repressing something horrible. She wore a basic body-suit with weird, clunky servos around the arms and legs, connected primarily to elbow-and-knee length gloves and boots. All across her were belts, upon which what must've been at least a dozen weapons were holstered, maybe even more if the weird little box on her back had something small in it. "Tinker, current threat rating is Tinker-slash-Blaster four, with a secondary Thinker rating of three due to some of the next-to-impossible shots she's made with handheld weaponry, and with no sign of a visor or other augmentative equipment which would provide her with an aiming system."
There was a short pause as the screen changed again, this time to another image, her arm thrown forward, spear leaving her fingers. It was fuckin' cool, especially when she caught sight of the terrified looking Empire guy trying to dive behind a trashcan in the corner of the shot.
"We believe she specializes in handheld projectiles," Armsmaster continued, somehow making fucking rocket spears boring. "With some abilities to work afield from that, possibly to augment her ability to throw and use them. The reason why I'm bringing this up is, currently, she's on her last strike from us before we take action against her to bring her in. Her most recent incident involved her having to stay around to ensure one of her targets didn't bleed out because she put a rocket-propelled spear through the artery in his thigh."
Okay, so, not the smartest thing, but still fucking kickass. God, she just wished she wasn't stuck with the fucking Wards.
"There's other concerns as well that leave us worried, such as her behavior towards her tar—" Armsmaster faltered as, without any warning, her phone started ringing. Sophia froze, bristling unconsciously as every fucking head in the room turned to look at her, even Assault, who had been near the door, but he looked more like he was trying really hard not to laugh. Fucker.
"Shadow Stalker," Armsmaster said with poignant disappointment. "Do you need to answer that?"
Anything to be out of here, sure as fuck. "Yeah, s'an emergency."
Armsmaster made the physical approximation of an eyeroll with his posture, waving dismissively at her. She was tempted to call him a fuckhead for doing it, but she was already on strike two for insubordination and she hardly needed to spend more time in a room full of kids.
Rushing to pull her phone out of her pocket and make for the door at the same time, Sophia faltered. Why the fuck was Taylor calling her? Was Emma using her phone or something or—you know what, take the gift for what it is, Sophia. Clicking 'answer' while shooting a glare at Assault, who broke into actual cackles at her, ass, Sophia tucked the phone into the gap between her ear and her shoulder, making directly for the washroom down the hall.
"Okay Hebert, what the fuck?"
"I need you to pretend I slept over at your house yesterday," Hebert - Taylor, whatever, Emma was always fucking weird about that. 'The reedy one' said, to the background noise of... the ocean? What, was she down by the boardwalk, or more importantly, what the fuck was she— "She thinks we're sleeping together."
"What. What the fuck, Hebert, where the fuck are you, why the fuck are you like this, and"—pushing the bathroom door open, Sophia slipped it and kicked that fucker shut before turning the lock—"what the fuck is your damage?"
"Uhm. In order: I was out late-ish last night and wasn't home in time for my dad to try and wake me up for a visit I didn't want to do, I'm in Boston right now, probably undiagnosed ADHD, and also probably undiagnosed ADHD."
"What the fuck are you in Boston for?"
"The boats."
What the fuck. "You like boats that much?"
"No, I hate them. That's my father who likes them so much, y'know, dude who restarted the ferry, general all-around good dude, killer puppy-dog eyes and is totally thinking I'm 'handling women's problems in the bathroom'." Hebert paused, the sound of water turning on quickly overwhelming much else, accompanied by some muffled shouting that fell away after a few seconds. "Sorry, gotta go, my dad's looking for me. Anyway, if your mother asks if you're dating me or whatever, just play along?"
"What the fuck Hebert don't you dare han—"
She hung up.
Sophia loosed a scream of confused rage and punched the wall. It hurt her more than she hurt it.
"So, you like girls." Mom said, smiling flatly at her. This wasn't a conversation she wanted to have, but considering the giant fucking white woman in the room, she'd have to cope. "I didn't know, I thought you'd just broken up with Jordan..?"
Annette Hebert, possibly a great look into what Hebert herself might look like in the distant future, she kinda stared at the two of them with this intense, probing stare. Apparently, Taylor got her height from her mother, not her father. Or well, maybe she got it from both, Sophia had neither seen nor wanted to see what Hebert's dad looked like.
"I mean, do we really have to get into the nitty gritty?" Shit, that didn't sound very forward. Mom just hummed, shifting in her seat, staring her down with the lazy, bored stare of a cat. Why was shit always like this, why couldn't Mom just play along, she liked the drama just as much as someone else. It wasn't like her mother was homophobic or anything either, just... difficult.
With a shrug, Mom smiled pleasantly at Annette, who relaxed noticeably beneath it, looking a bit at ease. "We'll see."
"Can I just, go to my room now?"
Mom spared her another glance. "No."
Aw, shit.
Settling back into the plush of the loveseat, Sophia took another sip from her glass of water. Annette - Mrs. Hebert? - made small talk with Mom, smiling and being generous and entirely out of her element. Clearly, she'd come here expecting something different, or maybe something that might catch her daughter off guard. Which, really, would absolutely be true, if Sophia wasn't keeping the charade up.
...Which, actually, why was she? She didn't even like Hebert that much. She'd dropped all of this into her lap, her weirdly intense fuckin' mother was in her house. Yeah, yeah! Fuck this. "Actually, we're not dating."
The two adults turned to her, Mom in particular raised an eyebrow. "You're not?"
"Nope." Sophia joyously popped the 'p' on that sucker. Fuck yeah. She was going to revel in Taylor's despair, and also probably punch her when she next got the chance.
Mom's eyes narrowed. "But you do hang out."
"I mean, yeah, sometimes."
"And you told me, before you even got home, that she stayed over."
"Yeah, but I lied."
Mom tutted, a low 'tsk'. "Honey," she said, syrupy sweet and it became all to real that she had walked right into that fucking trap, oh shit. "You don't need to hide this from me, I support whoever you want to date, boys, girls, those of neither persuasion, all three, even."
Shit, shit shit shit. Fuck. "Seriously, I was lying."
Mom sighed, low in her throat, and even Annette looked a bit amused by her denials. Oh she was so going to fucking kill Hebert, so help her she would fucking ruin her—
"Taylor went through a phase like this, too, had difficulties admitting she was bisexual after her boyfriend at the time reacted... poorly to it," Annette confessed. "Last year, got into a bunch of trouble afterwards, he was abusive, I think. You're a nice girl, Sophia, I hope you treat her better than the last one."
Sophia wasn't sure what to do with that info but... well, she could kinda recall it. Hebert looking increasingly scuffed up, how she'd pulled away from Emma, how worried Emma had been about that, how she hadn't gotten jealous over that worry and how shit had just instantly and immediately returned to normal without any prior notice one day and, well, she'd fallen back into a rhythm.
Mom was looking at her with... not knowing, but careful eyes. Proud ones? No, no, not pride, but intensity. A bit like she was trusting her to... oh fuck even she bought it now. Fucking hell, she'd never hear the end of this.
No, no, on Monday, she was going to find Hebert and do unspeakable things to her in a place nobody could find them. When she was done, Hebert would go home and admit to lying about it to hang out with someone past her curfew or whatever and then, and then, then she would get the last laugh.
Fucking perfect.
Glancing up, Sophia reflexively scowled at Mom's smug smile. Petty bitch winning petty victories, she'd get the last laugh.
Last edited: Jun 1, 2020
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OxfordOctopus
May 14, 2020
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OxfordOctopus
OxfordOctopus
(Unverified Jackanape)
She/Her
May 14, 2020
#2
NULL-TRACK 0.2
Resting her chin on the heel of her palm, Taylor watched the scenery blur past from behind the slightly fogged-up glass in front of her. Mom had put Pat Benatar on at some point before she'd even gotten into the car, and she had managed to get through Love is a Battlefield and We Belong before she started to think that, maybe, just maybe, there might be something up with her song choices.
The smell of coffee, both her cup and her mother's, choked up the interior of the car. Dad claimed it made it impossible to drive, the way that the smell had sort of stained everything, but Taylor thought contrary to that. It smelled nice, in her opinion, familiar and comforting, the same way that her mother smelled familiar and comforting and made her calm down. She was actually pretty sure it was the only reason why she hadn't tried to leap out of the passenger seat when We Belong had started playing during a stop at a red light and Mom had stared at her with that sort of intense, heartfelt passion she tended to exude around important topics.
Tugging her thermos from the cup holder, Taylor popped the lid and took a quick sip. Bitter, but not in a bad way. The smell was what really made coffee enjoyable, though. Smacking her lips, Taylor refastened the lid and dropped the thermos between her legs, finally turning to the elephant in the room, or in this instance her mother. "Alright, what do we need to talk about so you'll feel like I can leave the car."
Mom flushed awkwardly, glancing nervously at her from the corner of her eye. Winslow was approaching from a distance, perched inelegantly at the top of the sloping hill they were driving up. It was on Mom's route to the University where she worked, though it was a bit of a detour if only because of traffic; there was another route to the University that didn't have the congested flow of cars that Paisley Street did, which slowed her down, but not by much.
"Sophia," she finally said after a moment of pause, the car slowing to a halt as a gaggle of teenage girls rushed across the street, decked to the nines in winter wear, their breaths blooming like fog in front of their faces. "Is a nice girl."
Oh, great. "Wait, did you go and visit her?"
The flush on her mother's face didn't grow, but it also didn't fade, which was telling. Her fingers tensed after a moment, almost white-knuckling against the curve of the steering wheel. "Dear," she said, almost sounding sombre. "I... yes, I realize it was an invasion of your trust to do so, and likely Sophia's—she hadn't come out to her mother yet, but... after Brent, hon, I couldn't just hope for the best."
Taylor swallowed, feeling a little nauseated, almost carsick, as the vehicle rolled back into motion. She reached down, unfastening the top of her thermos, taking another generous sip, relishing the burn across her tongue, the interior of her mouth. "It's okay."
"It isn't," Mom sighed. "It wasn't okay of me, I don't know how people's home lives are, if she had lived with less tolerant parents I could've just ruined her life. It wasn't okay of me, but... I needed to, and I'm sorry for that."
They drew in closer to Winslow, pulling into the student parking. Taylor unclasped her seatbelt, reaching into the back seats as she did to retrieve her bag. "I forgive you, Mom," she found herself saying, looking back at her. Her mother's face was wan, a bit tired, bags under her eyes and... maybe most distinct of all, worry in her face. She had been worried, she'd always been worried ever since they'd figured out bits and pieces about Brent, not enough for a clear picture, but enough to understand what happened in the abstract. Abuse, domestic, it wasn't a nice topic, and she knew it had crushed them, crushed her mother.
"I'll be safe," she impulsively blurted. Mom relaxed a little, reached out with warm palms to cup her face, brushing fingers along the cheekbones they shared.
"I know," she whispered, sounding hoarse. "I know you will, and I'll always be here if you need to tell someone anything, okay? No more hiding things like that."
If only she knew. Taylor smiled, throat a bit thick, and leaned in a bit more. Mom's hugs were great, enveloping, but soft; there was nothing possessive about them, nothing like Brent, or even her father's desperate hugs he'd given her after he found out. No, Mom understood that she had to let things be free, even if she was reluctant to do so. There was nothing but love there, warm, gentle, and soft.
Taylor pulled away, squawking a bit as her mother laid a kiss on her forehead. "Ew."
Mom laughed, a bright tinkling noise that was easy on the ears. "Go on, get to school. The first day back after winter break has to count for something, you know?"
"Ugh, don't remind me. I still have remedial work from like half the school after last year." That relationship hadn't been good for a lot of things, and her grades certainly hadn't been one of them.
Mom faltered a bit but regained her balance quick enough. She wore another fragile smile, hopeful for her, for her future, for Sophia. She felt a pang of guilt, harsh and sharp, at the fact that she'd lied about that, that she'd functionally tricked her mom into thinking she had gotten over Brent, gotten over closeness and intimacy and being bound by something like a relationship, something that could be exploited.
She was hiding a lot, and she hated herself for it.
Pushing the car door open, Taylor hauled her backpack over her shoulder, feeling it press against the folded spear she'd hidden beneath her shirt, looped into her bra. Shutting the door with one hand while she slipped the thermos into a side pocket with the other, she smiled back at her mom, who waved once more at her before pulling back out of her parking spot and driving off towards the university, pulling out of sight just moments later.
Taylor felt her shoulder slump, energy leaving her. Shit, she needed nicotine.
Pacing over towards the side of the building, Taylor plucked one of those appealing cancer sticks from the pack she'd hidden in the inner pocket of her jacket, clamping it between her lips and cupping one hand over the other end as shit lit it. It took a few times, she'd need another lighter soon, but soon enough she was inhaling that compound mixture of tar and addiction that would likely be the thing to kill her instead of anything like retribution for her violence by the E88. She inhaled, breathed out through her nose, and relished for a time the taste of nicotine churning in her mouth.
"Hey, Tay," Emma greeted, startling her. She glanced behind her, to where Emma was standing with a packet of gum in one hand, though at the sight of the length of her cigarette, she was quick to slip it back into her pocket. Something about the gesture still made her heart swell, just a little, not enough to give her back that energy she had in the safety of her parent's presence, but... enough. Enough that she might make it through the school without needing another.
"Ems," Taylor said back, trying to inject some of that energy into her voice, and managing from the way Emma almost... relaxed. Their friendship had gone through a rough period last year, especially into summer, before she'd come clean about Brent. She didn't know about the powers, nobody did, nobody had to, that was hers, but... She knew more than anyone else did, that was for sure. Everything Brent did to her, Brent's extended family, The Clan.
The two of them shared a smile, Emma's a bit wider than Taylor's. Winter break had been hard on her especially, modelling gigs lined up in such a way that meant they'd only seen one another a few times, once for the visit her family had made to the Barnes, and two other times during random periods she had off. Emma was a popular girl, after all.
Glancing back towards the school, Taylor grimaced, reminded that she went here instead of Arcadia or someplace with enough money to at least do rudimentary repairs. Winslow was a shithole. No, that wasn't even quite it, it was the shithole. Winslow was talked about by kids from other schools in the same way that Joseph's Max Security Juvenile Penitentiary was by Winslow students: a sort of nightmarish, gang-filled box they put all the people you didn't want living near you. It was the type of place that had horror stories thrown around about it all the time, every other kid from Arcadia thought that the teachers were also gang-affiliated, not to even begin with what Immaculata students probably thought about the cesspit.
Sucking on the last embers of her cigarette, Taylor let the bud drop from her fingers and mashed it under the heel of her chucks. Wordlessly, Emma handed her a pad of gum, which Taylor took three pieces out of and pocketed the rest, throwing the peppermint-flavoured strips into her mouth, chewing lazily.
"Your mom's gonna find out eventually, Taylor," Emma chided, looking oh-so-well put together in her knee-length, puffy jacket, with accompanying fur around the hood that matched the colour of her furry boots. Her hands had quickly returned to the outer pockets, clearly trying to avoid the cold, but the tiny little shudder that ran across her shoulders said that she hadn't fully succeeded. "You can only cover up so much of the smell with gum and body spray. She'll send you to Choices, you know that right?"
Ugh. Choices. It was an under-18 addiction health services program which kinda took root in Brockton a decade ago after the surge in drug trafficking started spilling over into the teenage population. It was funded, primarily, by a bunch of people who used it as a way to skimp out on taxes, and it wasn't really all that great at what it did. Most of the time Choices was just something you had to do to avoid having a rap sheet—go to six months of therapy to avoid having to explain to an employer why you had a dime bag of weed when you were sixteen, in other words.
Emma was also right, which sucked less, but still.
"I'll burn that bridge when I get to it," Taylor mumbled through the smack-and-chew of gum in her mouth. "I... it, it helps, okay, Emma? I can't really explain it, but..."
Emma shifted, looking a bit uncomfortable, guilty. She shouldn't be, but she always was. "She'll be upset, you know?" she said, voice quiet, but not timid. "But, but uh, I get it. A little. I don't understand the smoking, I think it's kinda gross, but... I get that you need it."
Meeting her eyes, Taylor felt herself relax. She could be open with Emma, comfortable, touchy-feely, even, she didn't have to clam up or hunch her shoulders or pull away. Widening her stance a little, Taylor opened her arms and Emma was quick to slip in, wrapping her in a hug. Emma smelled faintly of peppermint, from a lotion she used, Taylor was pretty sure. It was a nice scent, and hugging her back was fun, she was soft and small and almost like something she could protect. She was nothing like Brent, nothing at all, which made the itch to get away, to have her space, a frustrating but not unexpected intrusion.
The warning bell rang behind the two of them, a long, creaking drone that itched some part of Taylor's brain, told her the bell was probably going to break soon and they'd need to get it fixed. Shaking away the intrusive thought, Taylor disentangled herself from Emma, who smiled back up at her with slightly-flushed cheekbones, the splash of colour framing her eyes very well. She wasn't even really jealous of that, wasn't jealous of Emma, she was just pretty, pretty in a way that Taylor liked, but only so far, only inasmuch as she was willing to extend herself.
She could probably come to like Emma like she did Brent, it wouldn't take much, but she didn't really want to. There wasn't enough room left over in her chest for that, not by her estimate.
"Think we might have to run to get to Mr. Gladly's in time?" Taylor found herself asking.
Emma laughed, bright and giggly. Taylor found a smile pulling at her lips unconsciously, more warmth, more energy spilling into her marrow. This was why Emma mattered, she didn't need powers or station or money, just being Emma helped so much more than she could ever quantify, than she could ever really get across to Emma.
Emma circled her arm into Taylor's pulling her into her side with another laugh, and off they went.
"Hebert. Talk. Now." Sophia's fingers were fisted in the hem of her sweater before she could even get a running head start out of last class—English with Mrs. Bordeau.
Emma sent both of them an odd look. "Do I need to moderate a conversation?" She asked, getting a titter out of Madison, who had at some point wormed her way into Emma's inner circle. She was harmless, mostly, if a bit... shallow. No, she was getting distracted again.
""No."" They both said, in sync. Emma's eyes narrowed reflexively, but apparently, their mutual agreement was enough to placate her.
"Right, well," she pulled her jacket on in full, reaching forward to pluck the over-the-shoulder bag from her desk. Most of the classroom had left by now, eager to leave and get home and warm. Winslow was kinda leaky, meaning most people wore some of their outerwear even when in class, not that the leakiness had been fixed. Taylor was pretty sure it was a problem with the building. "I have another gig today, then an entire week off - thank god - and if I so much as hear either of you getting into trouble, so help me, I will not spare either of you."
Sophia just grunted, taking it at face value. Taylor choked back a laugh, which, yeah. Okay. Emma could be terrifying, but not to her, not really. It was just kinda cute, and the way Emma's ears pinkened meant she knew it too.
Sniffing, Emma turned away, walking towards the door, the gaggle of hangers-on with her. "Well, you two do your thing."
Then she was gone, and so was everyone else. Hell, even Mrs. Bordeau had gotten out of dodge, apparently, considering Taylor couldn't see hide nor hair of her and she was pretty damn sure the English classroom was her homeroom.
A sharp yank from Sophia sent her stumbling into the wall just to her right, her shoulder and - more importantly - the part of her back where she'd hidden the telescoped spear crashing in hard, the sharp ache of metal biting into her muscle more than telling for the type of bruise she'd have to deal with.
"Okay, Hebert, explain."
See, that was kinda what Taylor liked about Sophia, maybe more than she should. Sure, she was aggressive and physical and snarled but... while she could probably make surface-level comparisons to Brent, that wasn't quite it. There was something straightforward, honest, about her aggression, and... well.
Taylor kinda liked it?
Which, well, she'd unpack later. Probably.
"I was out last night," she fibbed easily. "I wanted to hang out with someone and I just didn't get home in time."
Fingers tangled into the front of her sweater, tugging her forward and, although Sophia was actually shorter than her, still managing to make her lift up onto her tippy-toes. Alright, so, maybe she liked the straightforward aggression a little less when Sophia kept grabbing at her clothes.
"That's bullshit," Sophia said with absolute clarity, which, fuck, it was. "But I don't really care why, unless you're doing drugs, in which case, fuck off, leave Emma alone, whatever else. No, I don't care, what I care about is your mom making my mom think I'm fucking you."
Sophia shook her once, probably for good measure.
"Well, thank you for covering for me?" Taylor hedged.
Another shake, this time there was a bit of a tug from her shirt. She shifted her shoulders, trying to get whatever snagged to pull away. The bra she wore was a piece of shit with those awful clamps but it was like one of the three that fit her, so she just had to cope.
"I didn't. I told them you were lying and they thought I was just embarrassed!" Sophia ended in a shout, shaking her one last time, the tugging giving way with a sudden rip of relief, only for that relief to vanish as something hard, cold, and metallic fell down her back, her hips and ass not big enough to catch the thing before it slipped free of her shirt and hit the ground with a loud, loud clatter.
Both of them looked down just in time for it to fully open because apparently luck wasn't on her side today and the thing had landed button fucking down on the ground.
Sophia's fingers left her sweater, finally letting Taylor drop back down to her heels.
"This absolutely isn't what it looks like," Taylor said, trying to inject confidence into her voice.
Sophia just kinda gawked. "You're Shrike."
...Well, she wasn't expecting that. "Okay, so it is."
Sophia, apparently on a similar wavelength, glanced up and squinted. "The fuck did you think I meant?"
"I don't know, a school shooter?" Which, really, that was her major concern. The last thing she needed was a rumour that she was a school shooter to completely bring her experiences with schoolyard drama to completion.
Sophia made a slightly broken noise, somewhere between a sigh and a groan. "Fuck, fuck, fucking of course this would happen."
"Look, I'm not even that upset. You just need to keep my secret, it can't get out that I'm, y'know, that." Taylor quickly added, reaching out to gently pat Sophia on the side of the arm before leaning down and making a reach for her spear, one that was stopped by Sophia's shoe stepping down on it.
"I wouldn't out you," she said with... well, a lot of familiarity to the topic of cape identities. Was she a groupie or something? "So, just, don't worry. I'll keep your damn secret, just... fuckin', don't try to use me like that again, we clear?"
Pressing the button, which Sophia thankfully hadn't stepped on, Taylor watched as a javelin's length was compacted down into something roughly the length of a television remote. "Sure thing, Sophia."
She got a grunt in return, and a moved foot, which was a lot more valuable than Sophia's sometimes-intelligible grunting.
Pocketing the collapsed javelin - because she wasn't having take two of this in this school, fuck that, especially if it ran the risk of Greg finding out, eugh - Taylor stumbled over to her desk, plucked her bag from it, still feeling a bit out of her element. Turning, she met eyes with Sophia, who was staring somewhat blankly at her, like she'd just had a lot of things in her life thrown out of whack. Yeah, Taylor was putting solid money on 'cape groupie'. Never meet your heroes and all of that.
"See you tomorrow, Sophia!" She yelled, moving at a speed that was just below jogging, catching sight of Mrs. Bordeau strutting up the hallway, like six feet and four inches in those foot-destroying heels of hers. How did she even walk in those and—no, bad brain, she was getting distracted again. Fuck, why couldn't her power be multi-tasking or something? Maybe then she'd have a bigger attention span.
"Fuckin', whatever. Hebert." Was the refrain she got back, just barely heard over the sound of her own shoes meeting the ground.
B-SIDE
Sophia grimaced, stretching one leg out from where she sat in the back of the PRT van. Her costume flexed against the motion, a little stuff, but not unexpectedly so from being so new. Dennis, across from her and also in that dumb costume of his, was trying very hard not to look, and while she could reward him for trying, she could also spite him for being weird about it. Mentally, admittedly, physical violence pre-patrol wasn't something she could get away with.
"So," Missy said over the comms, sounding as bored as Sophia felt. "Coming up on your fourth year in the Wards, huh?"
Ugh. "Don't remind me," she muttered darkly. Her mother was a sly, smug bitch and it had taken her maybe three days before she'd figured out what had happened. On the upside, she had kicked Derrick out and threatened him with physical violence when Sophia had, eugh, gotten... emotional about the incident, but on the other hand, she had to be emotional with her mother, and she had ended up in the Wards, without even a chance to actually try to clean up the streets like she wanted to.
Still, there were perks to being the Ward with the most seniority. Of course, most of those perks meant doing the leader's job for him because he got to be the leader by age instead of time spent in the Wards itself, but, hey, she only felt visceral, incandescent anger about being used like that. No big deal.
Anyway, aside from that reminder, today had actually gone pretty well. She had cornered Hebert, found out she was Shrike - which, just, what a fucking thing - and had... threatened... her... to... tell... her...
Aw, fuck.
She'd forgotten. Fucking. Just. God. Damn. It.
"SHIT!"
"Language!" Four people, two on the comms, one being Dennis, and the other being the van driver, said in sync.
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May 14, 2020
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Threadmarks NULL-TRACK 0.3
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OxfordOctopus
OxfordOctopus
(Unverified Jackanape)
She/Her
May 14, 2020
#3
NULL-TRACK 0.3
Summer sat like a leaded weight over her shoulders, carrying with it the sort of stifling heat that made her hate the season as a whole. It was unyielding, that heat, refusing to go away, clinging to her like sweat-damp hair, each breath in like inhaling campfire smoke. She felt disgusting, felt ugly in the way sweat clung to every article of clothing, every curly black hair, dripping down the back of her neck in salty lines.
Her shoes scuffed against the grass and dirt, and the drone of cicadas overwhelmed the background rumble of her mother's car. Tammi, off to her right, was smiling politely and sharing small-talk with her mom, little promises about her safety, her health, none of which she would keep. They both knew the reality of the situation, there was no ambiguity, not truly.
"Okay, hon!" Mom called, drawing her gaze back in. The air wavered like a mirage near where the dirt-and-gravel road was, heat radiating from each rock. For a moment, she almost wished her mother's car would break down, that she would be stuck here too, that there would be an excuse, an escape, and hated herself all the more for it when she felt disappointed terror at the sound of the engine chortling into gear. "Don't get into trouble, have fun with Tammi!"
She didn't want to. She wanted to go home, she wanted to be hugged by her mother, she wanted to be safe, wanted to know it in her bones that she was okay and not at risk.
The car pulled forward, her last escape. Down the dirt road it trundled, down and down and down until the treeline swallowed it whole, turning off the path towards the long stretch of highway that led them here, to the compound.
Turning, feeling dazed, Taylor watched as Tammi took hold of her luggage, started to pull them forward. The blonde girl stared at her, didn't glare, not really, but it was close. They weren't acquaintances, they were too close for that, but they weren't quite friends either. They shared the same secret, both knew the truth of things, the bruises along her arms, the rancid thoughts planted, watered and sowed by Brent.
A hand wrapped around her arm, hard enough to bruise. Brent stared back at her from her side, taller than she was, close to six feet, but not lanky like her. He was close to her age, the same sort of awkward teenager that most of her class was, but he'd filled out his frame unlike her, corded muscle and broad shoulders, accompanied by sandy-blonde hair and pale blue eyes, with a face flush with freckles and a sharp jawline. He smelled, ever-so-faintly, of cigarettes, and for a moment she could even remember liking the taste of nicotine on his tongue.
He pulled on her arm, hard enough that her shoulder gave a violent, pained twinge in response. "C'mon," he said, voice so cold, distant, carrying none of that warmth that he'd pointed in her direction at the start of the year. "I'm going to introduce you to my parents." Not a request, or a want, but a command.
He kept pulling, and pulling, and pulling, she felt further away from the grip around her arm, the bruises. She felt her feet slip, the world lance up to meet her, falling through it, through the dirt that surrounded the Herren compound, down into the very core of the world. The inky black reflected her face, a broken mask of bloodied lip and blackened eyes, and it - she - screamed, wild and terrified and lonely and broken and—
Taylor jolted awake, swallowing back the scream on her lips, hand reaching up to touch at her throat. Fuck, fuck—shit, fuck. Breathing was hard, coming out ragged and gasp-like, wheezes slipping out from between clenched teeth. She spread her hands out, felt the fabric beneath her palms, kneaded it like a cat and tried to remember that she was safe, to little effect.
Fucking, shit. Fuck.
Turning away from the gloom stretching across her ceiling, Taylor groaned as 3:11AM stared back at her from her bedside clock. Great, even better, she was awake three hours before she should've been. Fuck her sleep schedule, apparently, her mind decided it was time to revisit trauma and she fucking wasn't here for that.
Pushing herself up and into a sitting position, Taylor rolled some of the strain out of her shoulders, the taut muscle that brought a grimace of pain to her face as another fiery ache surfaced across the right side of her back. If it wasn't the cigarettes that would kill her, she would place her bets on stress, considering the damage it was doing to her physical health.
For a time, she found that she could just sit there, soak in the stillness of her body, stare at the wall at the far other end of her bed. Her fingers twitched, pulsed, and her mind raced, ideas, contingencies, plans and things she needed to do, not quite an itemized list in her head but close enough that her ability to sit still and try to regain some semblance of calm was quickly overrun by the need to just do something, to do anything, with her hands.
Slipping out of bed, Taylor silently walked the length of her room and locked the door with a twist of the bar. Turning back, she dropped to her knees at the side of her bed, slipping beneath it and reaching behind the pile of clothes she had been using as a cover for her other gear. She patted around, hand meeting only cold floorboards, before finally landing on one of her projects, her fingers wrapping tightly around metal that pinched and bit at her hands, not yet properly moulded into place. Pulling it out from beneath her bed, Taylor rocked herself back until she went from knees to heels to her ass, dropping the arm-length pole in her now-freed lap.
Even at a glance, it was a crude, ugly thing. It was going to be another spear, matter of fact, she'd been studying powers lately and the day before - and, yeesh, what a fucking day that was, poof went the 'secret' part of 'secret identity' - something had just clicked and she'd rushed home before her Mom or Dad could get back to work on this. She was calling it, perhaps not to her own benefit, Ahab. In function, it looked mostly identical to her spears, and that was intentional, it just had this bit of tech she'd finally figured out, finally put logic to, which upon activation would render it intangible to non-living material and only non-living material.
In practice, Ahab had been originally built to try and find a way to ignore air friction. Her weapons always were built to be as aerodynamic as possible, as came with the territory of her specialty, projectiles, but you could really only do so much when it came to dealing with stuff like that. Her thought process had been, when it came down to it, to just cut out physics entirely to get around the problem, and she had managed some minor success.
She had a few prototypes of Ahab which turned intangible, primarily based on Shadow Stalker's intangibility - a local Ward, celebrated generally as the one who had been able to survive four years in the system, which was a bit morbid - but they were intangible to everything, which made them kinda shit as far as weapons go. She had made a few which were on a timer, so they'd phase back into being after a set point, but she was bad at timing in general and sometimes the displaced matter wouldn't be the target, but rather the spear itself, which had resulted in some frustrating resource costs. At least when she broke shit normally she could just use the scrap, but when the material itself was shunted into a tertiary dimensional space or eradicated due to the laws of the universe, well, you can't really recycle, can you?
Still, this version of Ahab was probably the last one. As far as the tech and the weird little growth in her brain that apparently fed her this information, if modern science was to be believed, was concerned, it would only be intangible to non-living things. If it worked, she wouldn't have to run the risk of dimensionally shunting valuable resources into the ether, and she could start possibly taking down some of the more egregious members of the E88, maybe even a cape or two. Kaiser regularly hid in a suit of armour for protection, using walls of metal to defend otherwise, and this would go straight through that. She did wonder if it would hit Hookwolf's core, though, if that qualified as 'living', or if his metal itself might qualify as living too.
Thoughts for later. She was hardly going to seek out Hookwolf, that was an easy way to get brutally murdered by a racist.
Pulling at one of the jackets she'd used as a natural barrier between it and some of her unfinished tech, Taylor retrieved her tools - nothing much, not like she could get in a real lab, but she wasn't about to leave her lab in an abandoned place anyone could find and making a more realistic lab at home ran into the issue of having parents - from the interior pockets and started pulling away at the casing around the mechanism. She'd do some checks to make sure everything was still in working order, and if it was, she'd get to expanding that circuit board to make the effect extend out to encompass the entire length of a traditional javelin instead of the three and a half feet it was currently afforded.
At the very least, even if she couldn't start the process to manufacture the full outer length of the javelin, she could at least distract herself with what she had.
B-SIDE
Hebert looked like shit.
Which, well, wasn't new exactly, but she looked shittier than normal. She crept around the school like a tense wire, shoulders taut, eyes flicking back and forth, barely paying attention to Emma, like she was ready to be attacked, or ambushed, or something.
...Huh, did Hebert really think she snitched? Sophia wasn't sure how to feel about that, really. On the one hand, she was more than a little pissed at the implication, she was, however begrudgingly, a Ward, and there was something to be said about being trusted not to put someone's life at risk by outing them. Especially a Tinker, they had shelf-lives comparable to warm hummus and if it got around that she wasn't affiliated with anyone half of Brockton would be trying to force her to make them things and the other half would be trying to kill her.
On the other hand, it said something reasonably positive about Hebert that she didn't just immediately relax because someone promised her something. Good instincts, if nothing else, not that it was a surprise that the Shrike had good instincts, considering her rap sheet. God, if Armsmaster found out she knew who Shrike was and never tried to get her to join the Wards, he'd have a fit. It'd be funny as hell, but it'd also probably get her put on the console for the rest of her life, so she was weighing her options.
Still, watching Hebert skulk around was starting to grate on her nerves, and not just because Emma kept looking concerned. It bothered her that she never noticed any of this. Maybe she would've believed Hebert could've hidden reactions like this if she had been unacquainted with her, but looking back, Hebert had acted like this on more than one occasion, even after she'd left whatever abusive relationship she had been in and rejoined Emma's orbit. The bags under her eyes were noticeable, the way she tensed when anyone got near especially so. Had she just been completely blind to this? What else was she missing?
Ugh. That was going to bother her for weeks, wasn't it?
Watching Hebert scurry out the classroom door as the lunch bell rang, Sophia shot Emma a confused glance, getting a shrug in return. She looked worried, sure, but not fragile, not like she had been - looking back on it - for a few days after Hebert had returned to the fold. She had just assumed that Emma and Hebert had argued about something and it had taken a while for her to recover from it, but clearly, she was the opposite of inspective and probably shouldn't trust her first judgement if she could help it.
Pushing free from her chair and rising to her feet, Sophia snatched her bag from the place she'd left it beside her chair. "I'm going to go find Hebert."
"Why?" Emma asked, sounding suspicious.
"She keeps running around," Sophia said, not technically lying. "It's bothering me, so I'm going to find out why."
Emma paused, her face almost wincing. "Soph," she warned, almost quietly, making Sophia still. "Be... gentle with her, okay? I think it's a bad day for her."
No fucking kidding. "I will."
Emma's smile was a grateful, if somewhat fragile thing.
Turning and escaping through the door, Sophia tried to drum up any memories of where Hebert tended to hide for lunch. The bathroom? Nah. Certainly not the cafeteria, or outside, that girl was pasty enough to do double duty as printer paper. No, if she had to make a guess...
Finding the third-floor stairwell wasn't difficult, not by a long shot. It was mostly abandoned, largely due to water damage it had taken over the summer. It hadn't been taped off or anything - because Winslow staff couldn't be bothered to wipe their own asses if they didn't get something out of it - even when it probably should be, going by the sight of white-brown mould growing in the gaps between water-stained ceiling tiles.
Walking the relatively short length of the main hallway, Sophia spotted Taylor just out of the corner of her eye. She was sitting on a chair backwards at the corner-end of a branching hallway, chin and arms rest against the top of the back, her curly black hair pulled back into a loose ponytail at the crown of her head. Her bag was laid across one foot, and she hadn't bothered to take off her jacket, probably because she'd opened the window just behind her fully, letting the winter air in.
"So, what fucked you up?"
Hebert jerked, and it was only in hindsight that Sophia noticed her eyes had been closed. The bags were more pronounced now, somehow, dark purple bruises beneath her eyes that looked heavy and weighted, like age-lines if only for fatigue. Hebert glanced around for a few seconds, eyes confused, before her gaze landed on her, the tension rapidly leaving her body as she slumped forward, eyes lidded and tired, but aware.
"Not a lot of sleep," Hebert said after a few more seconds of silence, her voice hoarse, rough, like she'd been screaming. "I thought I could get a few minutes before the bell went off, maybe make the day easier."
Sophia frowned. "Did you think I snitched or something and it kept you up all night?"
"Not really," Hebert said, but didn't clarify.
Sighing, Sophia pinched the bridge of her nose. "Are you even going to try to eat lunch? I know you always bring a packed one. Emma's worried about you, suspicious too."
Taylor went a bit chalky for a second, looking profoundly nauseated. "No appetite," she rasped after a moment, drawing her tongue across chapped-looking lips.
Okay, so something had seriously shaken her. Goddammit, was she going to go into the PRT building today and end up with a notice for Shrike's arrest or something? Jesus, what could fuck up someone like that? "What happened?"
Taylor stared at her, glared almost. There was definite hostility behind the stare, but after a few more seconds, the energy just kinda slid out of her. She looked away, almost ashamedly. "Just... issues with sleeping," she finally admitted, voice quiet. "Don't press."
Nightmares or something then? Better than the alternative, she supposed. "Fine," Sophia grit out, finding the heat in her voice to be genuine, surprisingly. Something about the entire situation bothered her, but to be brutally fucking honest she wasn't about to think about that right now. "Can we at least talk about you telling your mother the truth about us?"
That got a reaction, for sure. Hebert staggered a bit, glancing at her with confused, almost pained eyes. Sophia tried not to feel vindicated about that and didn't quite manage to.
"I..." Hebert swallowed, fingers tensing. "I can't."
Okay, she was starting to get tired of this. Fuck Hebert's sensibilities. "Look—"
"No, wait." Hebert interrupted, which sent a jolt of something hateful and impulsive down her spine. Sophia breathed in through her nose, tried to center her anger, tensed her hand into a tight fist behind her back. "Please, just... I need a cover, okay? I—I can't keep sneaking out like that anymore, I don't even have a lab."
"That sounds like a you problem."
Hebert crumpled a bit, reaching up to press palms into each eye. "I... can we just pretend? It keeps my mother off my back, it makes her happy."
The last word was spoken with the sort of aching guilt that... well, more than resonated. Sophia adjusted, for a moment, centred her mind, stripped away her presumptions about Shrike or Hebert, then looked at her. Hebe—Taylor, Taylor stared back at her, fragile and bony and looking upset, with bruised spaces beneath each eye and a gaunt cast to her body. She was tense, tense like a knot, ready to snap. There was something uncomfortable in her eyes, a desperate edge that made her look almost manic.
...Oh. Taylor was pretty fucked up, wasn't she?
Sophia shut her eyes, bringing one hand up to cover them both, thumb and forefinger pressing into her temples. She was really considering this, really considering enabling this, really considering just playing along with the charade. A gusty breath pushed out through her lips, more of a sigh, her hand dragging down, pulling the skin around her eyes. Would it really be so much? It would keep Mom off her back about ex-boyfriends and shitty choices, it would give Heb—Taylor more space, it would give them both excuses to do things they'd prefer to...
Releasing her face, Sophia glanced back down at Taylor, who looked back up at her with brown eyes, sharp like broken glass. "Alright," she said, surprising herself with the calm she spoke with. "Alright, fine. Let's pretend."
Taylor smiled back at her, and it wasn't a wholly nice one. The jagged slant of her wide mouth, the little flicker of something more than just manic willpower in her eyes, it made her uncomfortable, made her feel like she was being stared down by something not entirely human. "Thank you," she said, voice genuine, almost heartfelt. This was getting worryingly close to 'emotional talk' territory. "I—just, thanks."
Last edited: May 19, 2020
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OxfordOctopus
May 14, 2020
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Threadmarks A-TRACK 1.1
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OxfordOctopus
OxfordOctopus
(Unverified Jackanape)
She/Her
May 16, 2020
#40
A-TRACK 1.1
"Have fun on your date, hun!" Mom's voice was cheerful, expressively so.
Each word was like another stab to her chest. Taylor was just glad she wasn't here to see her face.
"I will," Taylor said easily, though the halting ache of guilt only grew stronger in retaliation to the lie. "Don't worry, I'm just five minutes from where we're going to meet."
"Mh. I'm going out to pick up some extra stuff for the weekend at that twenty-four-hour place, so I'm going to need to get off soon. Did you need anything specific?"
Glancing around the corner of the brickwork, Taylor caught sight of the group in the dim light of the streetlamps. A field of reds and blacks, colours bared proudly, the sound of laughter distant but not inaudible. "No. I'm good."
"'Kay, have a nice night. Danny and I expect your call by ten-thirty, eleven at the latest. Be safe, okay?"
Taylor ducked back behind the corner of the building. "I will be. Talk to you later, Mom."
Mom laughed again, bright and mischievous. "Alright, I won't keep you from Sophia any longer." 'Sophia' was spoken with a certain lilt that almost made Taylor's face burn. She wasn't even really dating her, for pete's sake, how could she still feel embarrassed? Ugh.
The line went dead with a click, Taylor pulling her phone from her ear. Pressing her thumb into the touch screen, the circular wheel of options that was indicative of WIGIT phones ghosted into being, she flicked up towards the 'end call' option, then swivelled to 'sleep'. Just before her screen went black, Taylor caught sight of her text messages, which she had a few of. She'd get back to them later, it'd taken a few days to convincingly plan an outing with Sophia and she wasn't about to waste her freedom by texting with people she'd see tomorrow anyway. She dropped the phone back into her pocket, she'd deal with that later.
Glancing back down the street, Taylor felt her face harden a little at the sight of them. All told, there were maybe six or seven people, most wearing the colours but without weapons or tattoos. The ones who were leading the pack, about two all told, were the more visible members of the gang, equipped with a bat each and probably a gun was hidden away for if shit got territorial. They were, after all, in Merchant territory, not that Skidmark or his followers ever bothered to keep the place secure.
But then again, that wasn't really the point either? This was the side of the Empire people didn't talk about. Sure, the murders and rapes and the more egregious garbage got put on the television and newspapers, the lynchings and hate crimes, but none of this. No, the way the Empire really exerted its influence was through harassment, a constant flood of heckling, threats, and vandalized property. It rarely escalated to more severe crimes, but they still came down, almost daily, in big roving groups to make sure every non-white person in a community knew just exactly how safe they were.
It wasn't uncommon to see the hangers-on, either. Rich kids, frat boys, most of the group she could see wouldn't be out of place in a polo shirt at one of Uncle Alan's parties, accompanied by their too-rich parents and spending most of their time trying to get into the pants of teenage girls. To them, this was more like LARPing, playing the bit to get some of the 'anger' out, wearing red and black, sure, but they were just here for some fun with the boys, some casual racism to work out some stress.
The worst part was that there wasn't much you could do about it. The Empire chose their targets well or got tips from white kids with connections who were feeling displaced by non-white class members or coworkers. She'd seen it happen before, a few of the Empire kids in her first year at Winslow had nearly run Jenna out of the school by following her home one day and spreading her home address to the people who went out on harassment raids, ended up with her getting a few bricks through the window, a swastika spray-painted on her front door, and her front lawn set on fire. It had been the drama of the year, especially when the guys who had put her in danger like that had boasted about it and nearly gotten beaten to death by Jenna's two college-aged brothers in retaliation for what they'd done to their family.
Spreading her fingers against the brick facade, Taylor shook her head. This wasn't the first gang of 'impressionable but good college students' who she'd attacked. Some of her first outings had been against this type of person, in large part because they chafed the worst. It was one thing to be an avowed racist and spend your nights trying to find targets to kill, that was morally black but simple. These college students? All racist, enough at least to go along with this, to terrify people, to show them just how unsafe they are, but they liked to pretend they weren't, or that it was just a mistake or something they did while drunk.
They got away with it most of the time, too. They'd started calling her Shrike because she'd left people nailed to walls through their flesh, but she hadn't just arbitrarily chosen to do so. No, she'd done it so that they would have to pull the damn tools of her trade right out of their flesh, they'd have to be processed, they'd have to be written down for being at the scene of a crime. None of them got slapped with hate crime laws, no, rich white boys didn't, not in Brockton, not in America, but that vandalism charge, that harassment charge? They had to be scrubbed from the record, and likely would be, but it would still cost them something.
To a certain extent, that's all that really mattered to her. That they pay, that their actions have consequences, that they hurt for doing something like that to someone else, all because they could, because they felt invulnerable.
Taylor pulled out from behind the building, reaching behind her to click at the dispenser. A dart fell into her hand, and she stumbled, the instinct to check what it was, to make sure she could use it, overwritten. She shut her eyes tight, fighting against the headache that bloomed across her forehead, and tried to think around the issue. She knew, somewhere in her mind, what she was holding, she had the memories associated with it, with studying Blindside's power when they'd made a short appearance in Brockton after fleeing Accord in Boston. She knew, logically, that the dart in her hand had an effect that made it impossible to look at, but somehow knowing that brought with its own headache.
Sometimes, she wondered what exactly the fuck she was doing making darts like that. What compelled her to make something so counterproductive? Goddamn, was she just stupid?
Ugh. Whatever. Cope later, deal now. Focusing on the people she was approaching helped, not that they had taken notice of her yet. They were all busy, shouting and jeering at one of the smaller houses on the street, stuffed in between two different convenience stores. One guy - black hair, brown eyes, she'd remember him - had a can of red spray paint and was laughing hysterically as he wrote 'chimp' between two windows he had defaced with crudely-drawn swastikas. One of the two leaders of the harassment party had gone up to the front door and was rattling his bat against it, a constant bang-bang-bang of metal against painted wood.
One of them, blonde and green-eyed, a guy in his early twenties and a few inches short of six feet, reared back abruptly, one hand cocked, and then threw. The rock sailed, a sloppy arc that slammed into one of the windows on the second floor of the house, cracking a spider web into its surface. There was a shrill, childish scream from the inside, muffled by the walls, which was quickly swallowed by a chorus of laughter.
Must be really fucking funny to them, right? All fun and games, they probably thought; all to have fun, to just enjoy themselves.
Taylor let the dart slip into the space between her fingers. She breathed in, settled the anger in her chest, felt the awareness of her projectile's path, how it would go if she threw it, begin to settle into focus. She had plenty of targets, the spray-painter, the leaders, the crowd of frat boys, the rock thrower.
The spray painter was the easiest target, at the very least. He wrote slowly, and now that she was closer she could see the mirth on his face, see the way he cherished each letter, each bit of hate. Just some fun, right? If they could have fun, so could she; after all, it was just a game, right? Right?
"Hey!" One of the guys had spotted her apparently, though probably due to the gloom of the street, he hadn't picked up on her being in costume or wearing a mask. She probably just looked like someone with a scarf and a jacket over some tights. Taking a closer look at the guy, he was blonde, but a platinum blonde that set him apart, with dark-hazel eyes. He was smiling at her, all teeth and dark promises. "You looking for some fun too?"
Ah. Taylor didn't even bother to check for a path, hitting him at this distance was trivial. She flicked her arm out, wrist snapping, and the dart lanced itself through the expensive boots he was wearing, pinning his foot to the floor. He howled, an agonized noise, and before he could reorient himself, she sped forward, used one hand to shove him to the ground, his foot twisting unpleasantly as it tried to dislodge itself from the thing-that-was-but-wasn't-there, while using the other to retrieve one of her spears from her belt. A favoured weapon, for sure.
People turned to look at her, but only the guy who had been rattling on the door with his bat got the significance of someone being pinned to the ground. Her spear slid out to its full length with a click, and she held the button down to swap modes. Normally, it was easier to have the spear use up all of its propellant at the start of a throw, give it a boost in speed that made it nearly impossible to dodge, but she didn't want him to get away, so instead, she set it to slow output.
She hopped once, cocking her arm back, nobody was close enough to stop it, and she relied only a little on the part of her power that told her where it would go to guide her aim. The guy jerked into action, tried to vault the railing on the small landing outside of the door, but got caught on his bat. The javelin left her fingers, its butt end igniting the second it did, but without so much force, instead looking more like a welder's flame, concentrated, but weaker. The bright screech of the propellant burning nearly deafened her, and half of the crowd of racist morons dropped to the ground, hands over their head, as the spear sailed easily through the air and slammed through bat-man's shoulder, driving him back into the door with enough force to make it creak before penetrating through, almost agonizingly slowly in comparison to what she was used to, the propellant fizzling out after it had sheathed more than three-fifths of itself into the flesh of his shoulder and through the door behind him.
Like the crack of a starting pistol, this was about the point where everyone, even the other guy with a bat, tried to flee. She had four left, all told, not easy but not difficult either, especially because they were all running in one pack.
Her first target was the kid with the spray paint. She reserved a javelin for him, plucking it from her belt, unfolding it, not bothering to modify the release rate of the propellant. He glanced at her, their eyes met, and something inside of her warmed in triumph at the palpable fear, at the terror. She smiled, not that he could see it behind the fabric of her scarf, and delved further into her aiming ability, felt her focus almost tingle. It was hard to describe using it, somewhere between knowing exactly where an object would go and having a little line drawn between the object and where it was likely to go. It wasn't always as accurate as it could be, but then it didn't deviate much anyway. She always hit her target if she tried.
She breathed in, out, and lanced out with her arm, the javelin sailing high, exploding into motion before the weighted tip dragged it back down, diving down at a sharp angle through the leg of spray-paint-guy, embedding itself into the dirt beneath him, the sharp crack of his knee breaking from the sudden impact and his accompanying scream of confused pain a satisfying accompaniment.
Three left.
Her next target was the other bat guy. He was balding, a shame for someone looking like he was maybe twenty-five at most, and had a complicated network of Celtic-knot-esque tattoos around his throat like a collar, with the occasional fascist emblem interspersed throughout it. It was a fine, high-detailed piece of work, and he clearly wore it with pride, his collar low, his shoulders exposed with that sleeveless t-shirt, showing off the pair of black suns he'd gotten inked into the flesh of each. He was running along the sidewalk, sprinting ahead of the two other frat boys, one of whom had faltered at the sight of spray-paint being speared through, had almost turned around to try to pull him free before rushing back towards the others.
She pulled at one of the darts she didn't keep in her dispenser, mostly because they didn't fit. She called it a yellowjacket, it was about two times the size of her average darts and had the general form factor of a cigar tipped with a needle as long as her middle finger. At the far end, where a pair of fins fanned out to give it decent aerodynamics, a butt-cap covered a coin-shaped ion battery which gave it just enough juice to shock someone with a charge comparable to a taser. It was among some of her first big creations, she even had a few versions with enough charge in them to superheat metal, not that she'd use those ones on people, considering their lethality.
Celtic-necklace - she didn't have any better descriptors, he was boring and bland outside of the pieces of artwork sewn into his skin, balding and white with wide brown eyes and an unflattering face covered in stubble that reminded her of wiry pubic hair - skid to a stop, clearly aware she was aiming at him. He reached behind him, scrabbling to pull at the three layers of shirt he'd worn to compensate for the fact that his shoulders were exposed in the middle of January, but whatever he was reaching for, she didn't give him the chance. A stationary target was almost painfully easy to hit, and she didn't even need to breathe in to steady herself, just threw her dart and watched it skewer through his foot before the butt end lit up blue and his entire body spasmed violently, dropping like a puppet with its strings cut a breath later, twitching every few seconds.
Two left.
The last two were the frat boys, and to be honest they had gotten a head start on her. Unfortunately for them, they'd also decided to run with one another, which was a big no-no. Didn't they know Blaster protocols? She'd gotten bored in class once and read the entire handbook for dealing with categorized parahuman threats. Blasters and Shakers had a protocol above 3 to keep people apart unless otherwise specified to avoid the chance of the cape getting lucky and managing to take down two or more operatives with one shot.
Of course, even she wasn't capable of curving shots, but it wasn't like she went without secondary options. Reaching beyond her dispenser, Taylor started sprinting forward, feeling the icy air cut against her face, felt her heart soar with glee as her face flushed red, not entirely from the air. Her fingers tightened around the spool of steel cable, giving it a tug to dislodge it from the latch on her belt, pulling the bola free. It wasn't much to look at, honestly, she hadn't put nearly as much effort into it, little more than two metal spheres connected by a length of unnaturally flexible steel cable, but oh, would it ever do.
Pressing back into her Thinker power, Taylor spun the bola above her head, letting the speed rise. The trajectory wavered, unhappy with her choice of implement, but eventually settled into a comfortable line, about as accurate as she could manage it without it being entirely delivered by the power behind her arms. She kept running, felt her breath run short, watched as the two faltered, one almost stumbling, dragging the other back with him. She whipped her arm underhand, released, watched the bola sail with unfettered accuracy, slamming into one leg on each of them, pulling in tight and impacting the back of one's leg with a meaty crack, heavily bruising the bone at the very least, both of them dropping into the grass of the yard they'd been running through.
Taylor slowed down, exhaled harshly. Her throat hurt, burned, but not unpleasantly, her heart hammering away in her chest. She kept her pace at a walk, but not a slow one, pulling free one of the long knives from her belt. The one with the wounded leg probably wasn't about to go anywhere, that much was clear, but the other? He was already unravelling himself, scrambling forward and trying to get to his feet, currently on his hands and knees.
Taylor breathed in, threw, breathed out in a giggle as the knife sunk home into flesh and bone and pinned him to the grassy yard with a wet thud. The guy screamed, loud and wild, turning his face, gaunt and pale and topped with a crown of brown curls, to stare balefully at her, tears brimming in light-blue eyes.
She ignored him, laughter still on her lips.
"You guys sure can run fast," Taylor commented, wheezing the words out. "Gave me a chase, I enjoy those, you know? None of you care, of course, because you came out to harass people you find inferior by genetics and probably felt invincible up until I pinned one of your buddies to the ground with something that he is physically unable to see."
"Please!" The one with the wounded leg said, looking at her, fearing her. His green eyes were wide, afraid, and his crop of blonde fluff stuck to his face by the sweat he'd worked up. Man, was he out of shape. "We—I, I wasn't involved, okay?! I was just here to see how it went, to try and stop them."
"But you threw the rock," Taylor said flatly. Broken-leg froze, face cramping.
"I—"
"You threw the rock." Taylor reached behind her, tapped the button on her dispenser. A heavy dart slid into her fingers, and she pulled it up, let them all see it, glanced at it herself. It looked like a pretty traditional dart, nothing special about it, with the exception that the needle was pyramid-shaped, with sharp, serrated edges that, if she wasn't mistaken, could cut through steel. It was one of many pretty basic darts that she'd made, all of them just better at sticking into things.
Green-eyes swallowed thickly, fingers clenching in the grass. Taylor smiled, pulled at her scarf so he could see it, then glanced down at his legs.
"Please," he whispered, hoarse. "Don't, I—I didn't mean anything."
Taylor shrugged. She'd heard that before. "Maybe you didn't," she admitted. "But the people in that house?"
She met his eyes, drew her arm back. He paled, tried to move only to yelp as his leg shifted in just the right way to press harder into the metal weight. He writhed for a moment, clutching at his leg. If it was that bad, it was probably broken. Poor baby.
"It meant everything to them."
Taylor breathed in, out.
She threw.
He screamed.
B-SIDE
Sophia leaned against the back wall to her house, kicking at the snow that had collected around the walls in small piles. Her breath came out as a fog, each puff carried off by the wind, twirling into nothing. It was snowing, ever-so-slightly, tiny flurries that got caught on her eyelashes before instantly melting.
Fucking christ, was she cold. Shuffling her arms together, Sophia rocked back on her heel and cussed sharply beneath her breath. Her Mom was out seeing... Fred? Brad? Ugh, something like that. It was 'date night' for the two of them, though her mother was working from the assumption that she and Taylor had gone out to a cafe and then just kinda hung out afterwards. She'd been smug for the entire damn thing, too, going on and on about how nice it was and just, eugh. Moms were weird as fuck.
"Pst."
Sophia jolted, snapping her head around to, thank fucking god, Taylor. She was in her civvies instead of that black body-suit, jacket, glove and boot combo that defined her costumed outfit. She had a duffel bag over one shoulder, likely where she put it all, and glancing closer she looked... happy. Excited. Her face was flush with warmth and her entire posture was different from what it was like at school. There was none of that tension in her, just a liquid-smooth relaxed air about her that made her teeth itch.
"Took you long enough," she muttered instead of commenting on any of that, fishing her keys out of the pocket of her jacket and walking over to the back door. She slid the key in, twisted, and pushed the door open into her basement. Glancing behind her, Sophia put as much force into her glare as she could. "Shoes. Off."
Taylor smiled, bright and cheerful, raising her hands up in silent defeat.
Shucking her boots to the side, Sophia listened to the sound of Terry stomping around upstairs, making enough noise so that she knew he was present. Mom had set up that rule for them, for her sake, she didn't do well with not knowing and it just made relaxing that much easier. Paula, the littlest in their family, was probably asleep at this time—she was only four, and Terry was the only one outside of Mom who could get her to go to sleep at any reasonable time. She was quite the handful, apparently being one ran in the family.
The door shut behind her, drawing her stare. Taylor had taken off her shoes, chucks, and her jacket, revealing an orange shirt two or three sizes too big that reached her knees, beneath which she was wearing white leggings. She looked... nice, relaxed, put together for the first time since she'd seen the damn twiggy weirdo after meeting Emma at the start of the year. It was almost unnerving, but apparently, Taylor could sense that - or just discomfort in general, who the fuck knows with Tinkers or Thinkers - and smiled at her with lidded eyes, all cat-who-got-the-canary.
Glancing at the clock - quarter-past ten - Sophia grunted. "You want to call your parents? They're driving you back, yeah?"
"Can I sit down for a bit first? I'm cold and worn out." Taylor was looking meaningfully at the couch they'd sequestered away in the basement, on which Gumbo, their elderly fat labrador with the personality of a sloth, was taking up the majority of. He was asleep, of course, and even if he'd been originally bought as a therapy dog for her, she'd outgrown the need for him and he'd outgrown the ability to do that job, to begin with. He was living out his twilight years plump, lazy, and happy.
"Sure. Gumbo doesn't care, just don't push him off the couch and he'll reorient himself so he can keep sleeping," Sophia said, turning back towards the door, noticing that it was already locked. Good, so she was cautious too. Taylor was turning out to be kinda decent with her instincts, occasional near-murder aside. It was still a bit hard to swallow that the very same girl trying to gently coax a fat labrador to give her enough space to sit down once nearly dismembered an Empire gang member with a tinkertech disc, which had earned her her first strike out of three.
Pausing, Sophia turned back towards Taylor. "The television works too, and the remote should be on the table beside you if Terry hasn't misplaced it again."
Now that that was out of the way, Sophia turned off towards the basement hallways, passing by the couches. The hallway itself was situated beneath the stairway, and the basement itself was oddly shaped as a direct result. It ended up looking - on a floor plan, anyway - like a big circle with a line pointing straight out from it, with a few squares branching off from it. Rooms, mostly guest ones, but with hers at the far end of the hallway. Her door, covered in posters back when she'd... really cared about rock and boy bands and whatever else, stared back at her for a moment before she got over the bizarre hesitation that clouded her and pushed the thing open.
Her room was a mess, of course. It always was a mess, but it was her mess. She shut the door behind her, just in case, she didn't need Taylor to see anything amiss, nor did she really need Taylor seeing her shit, to begin with. She'd designed the thing after her mom had inherited the house from Grandpa, who had died when she was eleven. As a result, it meant the entire thing was bedecked in goth shit she outgrew at 12 but she had never gathered the energy to really bother with changing any of it. Black walls with odd lace trim, a dark-purple carpet beneath her socked toes, a roof covered in wallpaper - for ceilings, roofpaper? - that depicted churning, stormy clouds. Her bed was the same, gothic and ornate and uselessly overpriced but it had survived close to four years of abuse, so she was hardly going to complain.
The rest of her room was the same. She had a black-wood vanity, a big gothic mirror, two wardrobes similarly styled and a genuine-to-god victorian desk they'd painted black one night as a family, not too long after she triggered - though she had been over her goth phase at the time and it had been more to bond with her family in solidarity - on which her computer sat, along with her textbooks, and with which she'd managed to get a big plush leather computer chair out of it. She would've kept the desk anyway, to be honest, it was nice and sturdy but damn if that chair didn't make up for awkwardly gothifying what was otherwise an expensive antique piece of furniture.
Shucking her jacket, Sophia tossed it over her chair. Her pants came next, replaced with some sweatpants because while she couldn't give two quiet fucks what Taylor's mother would think if she had been wearing sweats to a date, her mother was a different story and she was there to see her leave in those tight abominations. Her shirt could stay, while it wasn't the loosest thing she had on offer, it wasn't uncomfortable to wear. Her socks followed after, mostly because they were still a bit damp from getting snow into her boots.
Walking back out of her room, making sure to shut the door as she went, Sophia prowled back out into the basement living area. Terry had come down, six foot six of too-fucking-tall in a gawky package. From the way he was smiling at Taylor, she was pretty sure he'd just tried to give the Shrike the fucking shovel talk, of all things. Not that she felt good about that, only annoyance, one hundred percent annoyance at her helicopter family who couldn't let things just fucking be.
"My mom should be over in ten minutes," Taylor said, still smiling at Terry while he smiled at her. While Taylor was taking it all in stride, clearly, Terry was wavering. Apparently, he wasn't used to people not being intimidated by his presence, which, really, nobody should be because most of his time was spent with his dolls and playing... what was it, Battlehammer? Or something? Ugh, she didn't know. It was stupid and had orcs, that's all she needed to know, anyway.
Walking over to Taylor's side, which got a curious look from the girl in question but, really, they had to at least make Terry think they were dating, Sophia got Gumbo to pull into a ball of pudge and snuffling, giving her just enough space to drop herself, hip-to-bony-as-fuck-seriously-what-the-hell-Taylor-hip. Terry raised an eyebrow at her, and meeting his eyes, mostly because she knew it would make him squirm, she threw one arm over Taylor's shoulders.
Terry stared, met her gaze, for a total of ten seconds before he lost the staring contest, glanced away, and looked very, very awkward. "So, uh." He shifted, glancing at the stairs a few times. "I'm just gonna... leave you two to it. Don't do anything I wouldn't do. Or whatever."
Watching him flee the lay-z boy chair and bolt up the stairs startled a laugh out of Taylor if the way her eyes widened in surprise was any indication.
Sophia wondered about him sometimes.
"How was your night?" Taylor asked, startling Sophia more than it probably should. She shot the other girl a glance.
For a moment, Sophia almost moved her arm, got up, and just went back to her room. The urge was there, intimacy, even faked, was hard for her and while spite could carry her quite the distance, it didn't do her much good in this instance. "I went out on the boardwalk for a bit, bought some clothes, then came home. What about you?"
Taylor just smiled, no teeth, but with an undercurrent of mirth that made Sophia feel more than a little uneasy. "You'll probably see it on the news tomorrow. They'll probably have a bunch of rich parents really angry about me attacking their kids 'unprovoked'."
That... "Well, did you?"
Taylor shot her a look. "They were doing that Empire thing where they harass and vandalize someone's house. A bunch of frat boys tagged along, you know how it is."
Sophia did, unfortunately, but it bothered her that Taylor spoke about it like that. There was anger, sure, but there was a certain sense of defeat tucked away in there. Again, she opened her mouth, tried to comment on that, to voice her thoughts, before just shutting it. It wasn't like she didn't trust Taylor or something, it was more... she didn't think anything she could say would do anything.
Ugh. Whatever.
Pulling herself free from Taylor and scritching Gumbo behind the ears, Sophia glanced towards the mini-fridge, tucked away in the corner. "Do you want anything to drink?"
Taylor looked at her, confusion and concern shifting to... was that relief? Weird. "Oh. Uh, sure."
"What do you like?"
"Anything that isn't Dr Pepper."
She could work with that. She was pretty sure there hadn't been a bottle of Dr Pepper in the house since... three boyfriends ago? Gregory or something, dude drank the shit like it was going extinct. Walking over to the mini-fridge and crouching down, silently counting the minutes until Ms. Hebert would get here and save both of them from awkwardly hovering around one-another, Sophia popped the door open.
"Does Coke do anything for you?"
"The drug or the drink?"
"Ugh. Fuck off."
Last edited: May 20, 2020
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OxfordOctopus
May 16, 2020
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Threadmarks A-TRACK 1.2
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OxfordOctopus
OxfordOctopus
(Unverified Jackanape)
She/Her
May 18, 2020
#69
A-TRACK 1.2
Mrs. Bauer was a stout, prickly woman in her mid-to-late 30s who - obvious to anyone who had to be in her presence for longer than thirty seconds - had neither prepared for nor willingly made the decision to be a high school gym teacher. She swore a lot, she held unfair and unpleasant expectations of the average teenager, she ran or at least played a part in most sports or fitness-adjacent clubs in the school, and she was by far the best teacher Winslow had to offer.
Taylor, personally, hated her.
"Hess!" Mrs. Bauer bellowed, tweeting that damn fucking red whistle that went everywhere with her. "If your ass isn't at the front of the pack by the end of this you'll be running sprints after school, are we clear?"
Sophia made a wordless noise of complaint that was audible even from the distance Taylor was away from her, about six people and a good half-dozen feet all told. Emma, to her left, was wheezing heavily, face smeared in sweat and her fingers clenched into tight fists. Even she wasn't feeling too hot, her breath a little too heavy, the sweat around her brows and down the back of her neck an annoyance that she couldn't risk breaking her stride to wipe away.
Blessedly, the last of the run around the enclosed gymnasium was only another lap, and Sophia cleared it with gusto, nearly collapsing into the wall as she did, looking ragged and overly-flush. Taylor pulled herself to a stop a few seconds later, cracking the toes of her shoe against the floor, and Emma followed shortly thereafter, giving the game away when she just about nearly had her legs collapse out from under her in relief, dropping to her knees and almost crawling her way to the wall, where she was safe from being trampled.
The burn in her legs was familiar and welcome, the sort of dull ache she got after a particularly good patrol. Sure, she got none of the catharsis from just running, there was no adrenaline in her system, no elation, but the cocktail of hormones physical exercise encouraged still swam around in her system, made her head feel a little light. Walking unsteadily over to her bag, Taylor pulled her water bottle free from the side pocket, brought it to her lips and squeezed, a torrent of some off-brand Gatorade pouring into her mouth, tasting vaguely like lemons.
Turning away from the wall, Taylor watched Camer—er, Lawrence, cross the finishing line, hobbling on crutches. Both of his legs were wrapped in bandages, clean ones, admittedly, but ones nonetheless. It was apparently part of the physiotherapy he had to get to heal the musculature she'd stabbed through, though she'd somehow managed to miss the bone. It was more than a little awkward watching him tottle around, avoiding people's gazes, but, well, he'd done the crime. It wasn't her fault he didn't like the punishment.
"How are you still standing?" Emma croaked, drawing her gaze back towards her. She was looking up, sweaty and messy and entirely out of her element, her face pinching into disgust as her hand went to pluck at the sweat-stained t-shirt that had gotten stuck on the skin of her collarbone.
Taylor blinked. That... shit, why hadn't she thought up an excuse for it? "I run." She hedged, carefully.
"Your mother drives you to school," Emma parried, eyes narrowing in playful suspicion.
Taylor coughed, well, more wheezed. Her throat burned something nasty, maybe she was in rougher shape than she thought. It wasn't a great idea to follow up a physically exhausting patrol with gym class, she probably should've known better. "I run nowadays, is all."
Dramatically flopping her head back, Emma extended one arm, face set in mock betrayal. "What happened to my nerd?" She whined, bright and warm and friendly. "Where did she go? How did she get replaced with a fitness nut?"
She was emotionally and physically shattered by someone she trusted, stared at herself in the mirror and saw only the sort of victims you see in cold case crime documentaries, the unpleasant, invasive part of her mind provided.
"She put down the books and picked up weights," Taylor said instead, mentally pushing away at the discordant rush of single-second flashbacks. "Gotta get bulked up for the ladies."
Emma choked, laughed. Bright, tinkling laughter, somewhere between the laugh of her mother and Alan's laugh. Restrained, yes, but bubbly and almost giggly, instead of big heaping booms, each laugh a pronounced bark, Emma laughed in short staccato bursts. It made her chest warm, flush, unrepentant happiness at no cost to herself. She almost hated how novel that idea was to her, how twisted she was to expect something different.
Taylor glanced away, towards Sophia, who had finally pulled herself up from the wall and was now making her way over to them, valiantly ignoring Mrs. Bauer's offered advice. Glancing from her to the clock, Taylor tilted her head to one side. Just a few minutes before lunch, then.
Meeting Emma's eyes, who had grown still and silent, Taylor smiled. "You wanna hang at lunch?"
The girl in question relaxed a bit, then smiled back, just as bright as her laugh. "Yeah, sure. Do you want to bring Sophia along, too?"
"I mean, I don't think I can get her to do anything," Taylor pointed out, getting a snort out of Emma, who had managed to find her phone and was now playing with it in her lap. "But if she wants to?"
Dropping her bag beside Emma, Sophia stared at the two of them, looking thoroughly exhausted and limp. "As long as you don't ask me to climb a single flight of fucking stairs, Taylor, you can even choose the venue."
Placing one hand over her heart, Taylor pushed a smirk to her face, getting an annoyed glare from both Emma and Sophia in retaliation. "Why, I would be honoured."
"Sit the fuck down you telephone pole," Sophia barked, sliding down into a crouch beside Emma.
Opening her mouth to respond, Taylor was cut short by the bell.
Sophia, having just slid onto her ass, glanced up at Taylor, then to the clock. With a noise almost like a kettle boiling, she banged the back of her head against the wall. Taylor watched raptly as Sophia, clearly struggling to reign her temper in, staggered her way back into a stand, each push of her legs accompanied by a sharp wince or tightened jaw, the discomfort obvious. Finally on her feet, Sophia glanced down at her bag, tried to bend over, and then immediately stopped, glaring at the two of them, Emma barely withholding her laughter if the way her shoulders were twitching was any indication.
"When I get this bag," Sophia said, voice flat and harsh. "I will start hitting you with it, and if I stop before you're dead, you will be very very lucky."
Emma broke into hysterical cackles. Sophia kept her promise.
Mid-January in Brockton was odd, in comparison to the rest of the east coast. It wasn't warm, not really, Brockton shared the Atlantic and got long, cold, miserably wet winters as a direct consequence, but it also wasn't the biting, fierce chill that you could probably find in Boston or up near the Bay of Fundy. Really, Brockton was actually unusually warm for the region, sometimes they'd get into the negatives, between -1 to -10, but never for too long, and only in short bursts.
The reason for that wasn't anything Taylor knew off her heart, but if she had to guess it was the fact that Brockton was a bit of a valley. Not entirely, but it had enough rocky terrain around the outskirts to trap heat like a vessel, taking the edge off of Atlantic winters and leading to the phenomenon of mid-January feeling like spring was almost around the corner, even if she knew that it could just as easily be frigidly cold in a few days and nobody would consider it all that weird.
True to her promise, she had led them outside but not up any flights of stairs, but rather straight outside, to the hill just at the front of the school. The grass was all brown from the cold, sure, but the hill Winslow sat on was hardly claustrophobic or ugly, giving a great view of the city from its perch, and while she was getting dirt on her ass by sitting on the ground, she didn't care. Hell, she was pretty sure Sophia and Emma didn't either, though both of them had bundled up the moment she'd mentioned going outside.
Biting into her sandwich, Taylor tried not to be disappointed. So Dad made lunch today, not great, not bad, either, it was just he had a... unique interpretation of when and where you should be adding paprika to things, and roast beef kinda-really wasn't one of them.
Bumping shoulders with Emma, Taylor wagged the sandwich in her direction.
"Paprika?" She asked, unprompted. Her lunch, by contrast, was a salad with a honey-coloured dressing that smelled profusely of vinegar. Whatever she got out of eating that with raw red onion and heirloom tomatoes, well, Taylor sure as fuck didn't know.
Swallowing her bite, Taylor nodded. "Roast beef."
Emma made a face.
Sophia stared at the two of them, looking a little confused. "Paprika?"
"Her Dad puts it on everything," Emma supplied easily, not even looking away from her phone. The glare of the sun made whatever on it unreadable from Taylor's angle, and anyway it wasn't nice to peek on people's personal conversations.
"Dad got on a kick when he came back from their last anniversary," Taylor continued, Emma having trailed off. "Came home like he'd had a revelation, I didn't understand what it meant until he started putting the shit on everything. It works, sometimes, but paprika doesn't really go on roast beef sandwiches, is all."
Sophia made a weak, bewildered noise. "Why is your family so weird," she asked after a moment. "Is this a white parent thing? I mean my mom can be a smug bitch but she's not weird like that."
"No, it's a uniquely Hebert thing," Emma cut in before Taylor could defend her parents from justified complaints about being 'weird'. "I'm convinced that the only reason why my and Taylor's dads even get along is that Danny forgoes class consciousness just to fuck with him by being weird. I don't understand their friendship."
"I don't think my mom and your mom do either," Taylor pointed out.
Emma blinked. "You might be right about that, actually."
Personally, Taylor was pretty sure Aunt Zoe would try to elope with her mom if Dad and Uncle Alan had a falling out, not that it was likely.
Glancing at Sophia, who was picking at her own sandwich, likely free of excessive amounts of paprika, Taylor tilted her head to one side. "Got any commentary?"
"Literally nothing besides the fact that this confirmed exactly what I assumed your family must be like," Sophia shot back without any heat, pausing to take a bite.
"Well, you'll have to meet them someday," Emma interjected, sounding almost tense. "You're dating, after all."
Sophia choked.
Taylor did too, even if she hadn't been eating anything at the time.
"Who?" Taylor managed, coughing a few times. Sophia wasn't in any state to say anything, her throat bobbing visibly as she tried to work the crumbly excess of her sandwich down her throat, skin warm and—no, Taylor, focus. More important things.
"Dad," Emma said, voice carefully blank. "Mentioned it at dinner. Were either of you going to tell me?"
She sounded... hurt. Not betrayed, not upset, but hurt, pained. Taylor felt her chest tighten a little, opened her mouth to say something but was cut off by a sharp shake of Emma's head.
"No, okay. Look, just... I'm not happy you guys didn't tell me, but I get it. Taylor, you deserve a good relationship, you do, you deserve a person who will treat you well after Brent. I refuse to ruin this chance," Emma said, conviction almost managing to bury the slight pain, the waver. Taylor still noticed, Sophia probably did too. "B-but, uhm, I hope, that it can work out with you two? I won't try to interfere and I'll get if you guys want to hang out more on your own without a thi—"
"No." Sophia didn't quite shout, but it was close. Her voice brooked no argument, was harsh and a total rejection of what she was saying. Emma froze, Taylor did too, that was the first time she'd heard anything like that coming out of Sophia. Most of the time, she acted like nothing could truly affect her, that nothing could stick. Something else shifted, a little puzzle piece matching up with the next, and it took a lot not to say oh because, well, obvious or not, Sophia liked Emma.
Shit, how hadn't she noticed that?
"No, no, just..." Sophia hesitated, wavered, before overcoming whatever was holding her back. "Look. Emma, we're going to include you, you're not a third wheel, we're a group. I don't care if Jacklyn Beanstalk over there wants more alone time"—Taylor couldn't help the laugh that escaped her at that name—"but you're part of... whatever, this is. Okay? Just, fuck me don't go burning bridges that quickly. Jesus fuck. You're like the only person I tolerate."
Emma, unusually quiet and withdrawn, glanced at Taylor. "What about your girlfriend?"
"The only one I tolerate," Sophia reaffirmed, shocking a giggle out of Emma. She'd curled into herself a little bit, her salad laying abandoned on the ground, her phone clutched tightly in one hand. There was a moment where, against her own better judgement, Taylor did wonder if Emma was about to self-destruct, if she was about to burn the bridges and run off to pretend like whatever was bothering her didn't, before finally relaxing, going a bit limp.
"Got worked up over nothing, huh," Emma said almost wetly, rushing up to brush her sleeve over her eyes.
Taylor leaned over, working mostly on instinct, and encircled Emma in her arms. Emma stiffened for a moment, sniffled - not sniffed, Emma had a good haughty sniff and this wasn't it, this was weak and vulnerable and made Taylor want to hurt something - but relaxed after a few more seconds. Unexpectedly, another pair of arms wrapped around Emma, pulling them all in close, forcing Taylor's nose into the side of Sophia's sweatshirt.
...Was it weird that Sophia smelled good? Because, like, Emma did too. Emma smelled like peppermint, warm and inviting, her skin was soft and she was, if not small - she was a little above average - at least smaller than Taylor. Her body was warm, she was nice to hug, unlike her bony self, and in general, she was just... relaxing to be near, to physically touch.
Sophia was sort of the same, just... different. Sophia smelled like used leather and oils, earthy, and she was warmer, almost hot to the touch in the chill of mid-January in Brockton. She was all corded muscle - not a surprise, Sophia had brought home the first few track-and-field trophies Winslow had won since it was originally built to house all the poor residents the rich landowners didn't want in their schools - but not exactly hard to the touch, not like her, where muscle had turned wiry and corded. She was nice, intense, it made her relax, made her eyes droop a little.
Even if it was weird, at least Emma, with her tiny genuine smiles, so hard to find among the hundreds of faces she wore for everyone else, seemed to be enjoying herself.
B-SIDE
Laying on her back, Sophia tried very hard not to think about the fact that she got involved in a hug pile. It was hard to avoid thinking about, to be fair, she had just shown emotional weakness in front of someone. Her therapist - not the PRT-issued ones, garbage as they were considering they got shuffled around like cards in a fucking deck - would be proud of her, and she kinda hated feeling happy about that. Fuck emotions, honestly.
To her left, Emma was laid on her back as well, staring up at the roof of clouds that hadn't quite managed to fully cover the blue of the sky. To Emma's left was Taylor, who was pointing obstinately at something that, no matter what she said, genuinely did not look like a fucking cat. It looked like... god, she didn't know, the spokes on a bike?
"You really suck at this," Emma said bluntly, tilting her head, squinting, clearly trying to see Taylor's logic.
Taylor made a faux-hurt noise. "None of you can see my genius."
For a moment, Sophia kinda wondered if it was a Tinker thing. Throughout the years, she'd been around to see a few Tinkers come in and out of the Brockton Wards. Hell, she was pretty much the only consistent thing in it, except for Dean and more recently - largely due to her age - Missy. Most of the past Wards were older, late-teens, close to graduation, especially the Tinkers. She'd noticed, maybe only abstractly until she had put a word to it, that Tinkers kinda... thought weird. They worked down different tracks of logic to end up at the same result, tracks of logic that rarely made sense to anyone but them or people with similar specialties.
Or maybe she was overthinking it and Taylor was just really fuckin' weird, just like her parents.
"Oh, right. I completely forgot," Emma shifted, pushing herself into a sitting position. "Do either of you want to come along with me tomorrow after school to a photoshoot? Dad's only going to be able to drop me off and I would like it if I had someone familiar. It's not an important one, it's just..."
"Drama?" Taylor supplied knowingly. Sophia knew that Taylor had been going with Emma to her shoots when they were younger, though as far as she knew she'd stopped doing so during their first year of high school, for what might be obvious reasons. That and, truth be told, she probably got bored. She had gone to one or two shoots with Emma - for no other reason than to be there - and they had been some of the most boring experiences of her life with a lacklustre and kinda weak pay-off. As much as the magazines might paint the shoots in beautiful contrast and with pitch-perfect angles, sitting in a hard plastic seat at the far other end of a room while skinny tweens and teenagers pose awkwardly on a raised stage was hardly fun.
"Drama," Emma reaffirmed.
But, shit. Even if she wanted to go, she couldn't, could she? She had patrol immediately after school - they were even picking her up - and then she had her therapy session followed by another visit to PRT HQ for debriefing and their twice-monthly threat meeting. All of those were mandatory, she couldn't just skip. Fuck.
"Sorry," Sophia said, refusing the urge to twist her fingers together. "I have..." therapy, she wanted to say, even a small kernel of truth, something. "Family things to deal with right after school."
Thankfully, Emma didn't look disappointed or resigned. She just smiled that sort of smile people use to say they're hoping for your best, before glancing towards Taylor.
Blinking slowly like a cat, Taylor tilted her head to one side, thinking. "I genuinely don't have anything better to do," she said after a moment, stretching her arms out behind her as she rose back into a sitting position. "I'll have to tell my parents, and you know they'll make a thing about it because I haven't gone in a while and whatever else, but... I can, if you'd have me."
Emma smiled, brightly. It would almost be comical how Taylor relaxed beneath its focus, if not for the fact that her weakness to praise and positive reinforcement was likely from her recent history. Shit, that was depressing.
"Of course I'll have you," Emma said pointedly, reaching over to swat Taylor on the head. Dramatically, Taylor dropped back, clutching her head, mouth open in shock. "Oh, stop that."
"You mussed my hair!"
"You don't even comb it to begin with!"
"You don't comb curly hair! You let it do its own thing!"
"Even if that isn't bullshit so help me god I will tell your mother about the comb incident."
Taylor squawked in outrage. "You wouldn't! You promised!"
"Wouldn't I?" Emma said, smirking in a close approximation of Taylor's own 'I'm about to say something stupid' smirk.
The faux-banter continued on, devolving into background noise. Sophia returned her focus to the sky, watched as grey clouds slid into place where white, fluffy ones had been before. Probably meant rain was likely, though she could just check the weather app if she really needed to know. Taking a breath in, then out, Sophia turned to watch her two... friends? If you could call it that? Playfully shoot harmless jabs at one-another back-and-forth.
For once, she kinda felt like things might work out alright.
Last edited: Jun 30, 2020
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OxfordOctopus
May 18, 2020
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Threadmarks A-TRACK 1.3
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OxfordOctopus
OxfordOctopus
(Unverified Jackanape)
She/Her
May 20, 2020
#172
A-TRACK 1.3
"It's good to see you again, Taylor," Alan said easily, fingers drumming over his steering wheel. They'd gotten stuck in traffic for a little, though it wasn't like they were running late or anything. The studio itself was in sight, further down the road and off to the right, a warehouse-like structure nestled between industrial-looking concrete buildings.
Taylor twitched, glanced at Emma, who was busy texting on her phone, then back at Alan, who was looking at her from the rear-view mirror. "You too, Uncle Alan."
Alan smiled, and Taylor felt a bit nervous. Something about this felt like a set-up.
"So, how are you doing with Sophia?"
Ugh. Of course.
Trying not to roll her eyes, Taylor leaned back into her seat, flicking her eyes up as the light turned from red to green, Alan pulling forward. "We're doing good."
"Mh, I'm sure," Alan said, wry humour in his voice. This was, Taylor thought, outside of her own father's weirdness, the primary reason why Alan and her dad got along. They both really liked screwing with people and making people uncomfortable, likely for different reasons, but a unionist and a lawyer can make surprisingly effective bedfellows, unfortunately.
Emma grunted, finally giving the two of them the time of day. "Dad, don't bully Taylor."
The bully in question chuckled, putting some mock hurt into his voice. "How could you claim I would do such a thing, Emma? Do you think so little of your father?"
Emma looked him straight in the eye from the rearview mirror. "Yes."
"Even my own daughter," Alan bemoaned. His hands remained firm on the wheel, but Taylor could almost hear him clutching his chest-and-or-pearls in outrage in the tone of his voice.
If it wasn't clear, Emma got most of her personality from her father. Aunt Zoe was a wonderfully uncomplicated woman with a blunt side who, Taylor, frankly liked more than Alan, mostly because when she made a joke or poked fun at something about Taylor, she didn't put on a theatre show to do it. You would think it would be the other way around, but she was almost certain Alan's unspecified - the adults refused to comment on it - time in law school made a screw or fifteen get loose and now to express anything that wasn't fatherly disapproval the man reached for a costume to do it.
Finally pulling into the parking lot, where about six other teenagers and one particularly grumpy-looking Madame Lambert were waiting, Taylor unbuckled her seat belt, grabbed her bag, and was out of the overpriced sedan before Alan could inflict his attention on her again. Valiantly, Taylor ignored his quiet laughter at her scrambling out the door like her ass was on fire, but she did flip Emma the bird when she heard her join in too.
Fuck it was cold. Taylor huddled in, dumping her hands into her front pockets and wincing as even both layers of jacket refused to protect her entirely from the negative degree temperature outside. Brockton Bay really was fucking cursed, she was pretty sure anyway, how it could go from pleasant, if a bit nippy, weather, to the sort of weather that makes northern Canada an inhospitable wasteland - well, that and all the S-Class threats they had wandering around - in less than two total days was, frankly, fucking beyond her.
Emma finally climbed out of the car, waving her fingers at her father. Alan smiled, looking as bright as the sun - another thing Emma apparently inherited from her father, not that Taylor was complaining - before pulling away from them, the car's exhaust belching smoke as he drove around the parking lot and out through another exit, pulling onto the busy street and almost immediately getting locked between two obstinate trucks about four times his size and moving at about maybe 10mph all told.
"Didn't he have a case to get to?" Taylor asked blankly.
Emma shrugged. "He'll survive. C'mon, I don't want to get frostbite."
Turning to Emma, Taylor followed after her as they walked the length of the concrete parking lot. Madame Lambert was near the door, where she almost always was as the liaison for whatever company Emma got modelling work for. The other girls were vaguely familiar, and she chalked up her inability to recall the names of each to the fact that they'd probably grown over the year or so since she'd last seen them.
Once they'd gotten close enough, Madame Lambert finally caught sight of them and smiled. She was an older lady, earthy brown skin wrinkled around her face, with a tousle of curly grey hair crowning her head, but it didn't detract any from her smile. Sure, apparently Madame Lambert was a taskmaster who made Emma bitch and whine when she wasn't looking, but to be honest, Taylor wasn't about to reject blind kindness outright, not unless it came with a cost of some kind.
"Emma, you're needed inside, ah, about three minutes ago?" Madame Lambert commented, motioning towards the door as they grew increasingly near. Emma blinked, balked, and then started less walking, more almost-jogging, towards the door, her duffle bag hanging from one shoulder, hand fisted in the strap that connected to it. Madame Lambert leaned down, dragging a card connected to a lanyard across what was presumably a card reader, the heavy door clicking open and letting Emma push through and into the warehouse.
Smiling at her, Madame Lambert reached out to hold the door open. "Taylor, you look so good! Tall, too. Taller than me now." Madame Lambert was a tall woman, or at least, Taylor remembered her being. She had grown, sure, but... it felt odd looking down at her. "How tall are you now?"
Walking towards the door, Taylor reached out to take the weight of it. It was one of those security doors, thick and with some sort of magnetic pull that made holding it open an active fight against an opposing force. "Five... ten? I think? Maybe five-eleven. I'm not sure if I'm going to stop growing soon."
Pushing it fully open, Taylor passed through the threshold, catching sight of Emma's back vanishing beyond a curtain of fabric. "Have a good day, Taylor," Madame Lambert said in the few short seconds before the door slammed shut behind her, cutting the noise and chill away, leaving her almost helplessly overdressed for the warmth of the warehouse.
Unzipping her outer coat, Taylor pulled the thing from her shoulders, rolled it up, and threw it over her shoulder. Sure, she had her bag, which would be able to hold her jacket, but she didn't really want to drop the thing, unzip it, and then spend time awkwardly crouching over it and stuffing the damn thing inside. When she got situated, she'd manage.
Following after where Emma presumably had gone, Taylor met that same wall of fabric and pushed through it, revealing the interior of the studio. It was pretty generic, which wasn't unusual: a raised platform, on which green screens had been erected to cover the entire back wall. There were closer to thirty other people here, spread out among a space that could easily host about three hundred, most of whom were near her, at the far end of the hall where they'd set up refreshment tables and plastic chairs for people to sit in.
"Oh thank god you didn't get lost," Emma's voice startled, making Taylor whip her head around in surprise. Emma, not ten feet away and near the wall, was standing beside a blonde girl - hair pulled up into a ponytail - entirely outfitted in sweats and a pair of sunglasses. In one hand, what looked like bubble tea in a huge cup, and in the other, a similar sort of duffle bag that Emma had brought with her. Vaguely, Taylor was reminded that the company provided the bags themselves during a rally a few years ago for funds and for a more cohesive brand to market towards supporters.
"Vicky, this is Taylor," Emma said, voice rapid-fire. "Taylor, this is Victoria Dallon. Get along, or whatever, I need to go get dressed and get prepped for stage make-up in like, ten seconds."
What. "Wait, are you handing me off to someone?"
Emma shot her a flat look. "Taylor the last time I left you alone at one of these you got lost. In a studio warehouse. Of course I am."
"It's fine," Victoria, whoever the fuck that was, said, waving lazily with the hand she was holding her cup with. "I'll keep an eye on her. You go do your thing."
Emma shot her a grateful smile before turning on her heel and rushing towards the 'staff only' door at the far other end of the room, just beside the raised stage. Taylor watched her almost blankly, not quite sure how to feel about the fact that Emma thought it was necessary to get her a babysitter, before finally Emma pushed through the staff door and was out of sight.
Glancing towards Victoria, Taylor squinted. "Do I know you from something?" She did kinda look familiar, in that vague, I might've seen your face once at one of these things sort of way.
Victoria, straw almost raised to her lips, choked. She stared at her, or at least Taylor assumed so, considering she couldn't see her eyes behind the thick, 'I have a hangover go the fuck away' sunglasses she wore, before, with little prompting, Victoria started to fucking float.
Taylor stared.
Victoria stared.
There was a beat of silence before it clicked. "Oh, right, New Wave." Look, they didn't patrol near where she did, okay? She'd seen Laserdream at a mall all of once, and that was about the sum total of her experiences around that brand of particular political lunacy.
Victoria snorted. "'Oh, right'. Jeez, I wish everyone acted like you did, it'd make my life so much easier if people just didn't notice me."
"You are wearing sunglasses and sweats," Taylor pointed out, feeling a bit prickly.
Victoria 'pshaw'd', again managing to break the touch-and-go impression of Glory Girl she had in her head. "I just got finished doing my bit on the stage, I'm allowed to look like this."
That... huh. "Are your parents coming to pick you up later or something?"
Victoria glanced back at her, let her sunglasses slide down her face, and then proceeded to float without prompting again.
Oh. "Right, flight."
That got a laugh out of the superheroine, sharp and bark-like, almost giddy. She choked it back a few times, not quite managing, before wheezing and toppling back so that her back pressed into the wall, slowly lowering herself back down to her feet. "You looked so bewildered," she choked. "Sorry, I just—I just don't get those reactions anymore. It's nice, for once."
Finally, after gathering herself back together once again, Victoria placed her tea down on the table just to the left of her and turned fully. She reached up, plucked her sunglasses off of the bridge of her nose, folding them over the collar of her sweatshirt. Reaching out, Victoria offered her hand, palm sideways and fingers splayed. A handshake. "Sorry. I'm Victoria Dallon, sometimes Glory Girl. It's nice to meet Professor Hebert's kid, she talks about you a lot."
What. Still reaching out to take her hand, Taylor less shook, more let her arm be shaken by Victoria. "How do you know my mom?" She asked faintly.
"I'm taking preliminary university courses. Your mom specifically is my teacher for literature," she explained, still smiling. "Don't worry, she wasn't very talkative about you, but alongside knowing Emma because Alan and my mother work at the same firm, I've heard bits and pieces."
Feeling a bit faint, Taylor forced an awkward smile to her face. "It's nice to meet you, even at a disadvantage, then. I'm Taylor, I guess."
Pulling her hand away, Taylor let it drop to her side. An awkward sort of pause settled into the air, not that Victoria seemed particularly bothered by it. She had floated back over to the table and plucked her tea from it, taking sips from the straw that rattled the cup a little.
"How'd you get lost in a studio warehouse, anyway?"
Taylor groaned. "It was once, okay. I was told to go the wrong way by one of Emma's... competitors, or whatever you want to call it. I ended up in the maintenance part of the building and spent half an hour trying to retrace my steps because that same girl had rearranged the hallway to block off the way I came in. It was a mess."
Victoria winced, somewhat sympathetically. "I've avoided getting caught up in that," she mentioned, taking another sip from her cup. "Mostly because I'm kinda... untouchable, in that way. I've still seen it happen."
Grunting, but not making any other mention of it, Taylor walked over to the nearest chair, picked it up with one hand, and hauled the thing back towards Victoria. She discarded her bag near the wall and dropped the chair down by the table, laying her shucked coat over the length of the back, before finally dropping herself down into it. They were really uncomfortable, like all the bad things about classroom chairs just with even fewer accommodations for anyone taller than five-three, but at least she could sit now.
Rummaging around in the pockets of her jeans, Taylor dragged out her phone, folding one arm over the table and activating her phone, leaving it near her lap. The screen lit up, showing a small handful of texts, no missed calls, and a few notifications elsewhere. Basically nothing, in other words. Ugh.
"Bored already?" Victoria asked, Taylor glancing up to find her hovering slightly over her, glancing down at her phone, but not looking too invested with what was on the screen. Shrugging a bit awkwardly, Taylor turned to glance at the stage, where a thirteen year old girl was being directed to 'pose like she was running' by a pudgy man in his mid-to-late thirties. The girl in question was wearing an assortment of pretty normal clothes, all things aside, but she looked like she was nearly in tears.
"I guess," Taylor offered, flicking to her texts. Sophia hadn't texted her, but nothing said she couldn't. "Sorry, it's been about a year since I've gone to one of these, and I really want to make Emma feel supported. I kinda fucked up on that."
Victoria hummed a long, not-entirely-curious note. "Did you guys have a rough patch or something?"
"Not entirely. I was stupid, I just pushed everyone away." Aaand, send. Hopefully, that emoji-filled text would annoy Sophia sufficiently enough to—wow, she was really quick to reply when she was pissed. "We're rebuilding bridges, reforging ties, whatever."
Victoria took another audible sip of her tea, Taylor not looking up to check where she was.
"That's good," Victoria said after a moment. "I can understand having trouble with relationships, I'm glad you guys are back together."
Taylor did glance up that time, shooting Victoria a flat look. After a few moments, the blonde harpy laughed, a bright cackle of mischief and mirth. "Sorry," she said, waving her off, floating back towards the other end of the table, finally moving free of her personal space bubble. "Couldn't help myself. I know you two aren't dating."
Oh god, she was almost worse than Alan, and she was a teenager too, with powers, so she could say out of left field shit without being weird and restrained as a result of being a parent. Jesus christ. You know what? She wouldn't suffer alone for this. Reaching up with her phone, she took a picture and shot off another text to annoy Sophia.
"What was that for?" Victoria asked, sounding more amused than anything else.
Taylor frowned, knowing it looked petulant. "I refuse to suffer alone," she sniffed.
Her comment startled a burst of giggles out of Victoria. "Sorry, sorry, I am usually more mature than this, you just kinda caught me off guard by not knowing who I was, and it was just, so easy. Even with the picture, which, not gonna lie, I deserved if you're talking shit about me." Another snort, Victoria folded a hand over her mouth and choked a laugh into it until she could regain her composure. "Do you want me to pose for a few more sho—"
"Taylor!"
Glancing back around, she caught sight of Emma waving her down, beside her was a lady with a striking resemblance to Madame Lambert if about forty years younger. Tilting her head, Taylor rose to her feet, shot Victoria an annoyed look, which got another laugh out of her, shot Sophia another text message, and walked the length of the room towards Emma. She was dressed in what looked like... spring clothing? It looked good on her, complimented her hair.
The woman, on the other hand, stood at around her height, had warm brown skin, hawkish features, and was wearing a full suit. It worked for her, sure, but by the time Taylor had come to a stop a few feet in front of her, she was feeling a little intimidated by the way the woman heatlessly raked her eyes over Taylor's figure. Slipping her phone into her pocket, she glanced awkwardly at Emma, who shrugged.
"Taylor, is it? Yes, you're tall enough, right build too, good definition from what I can see beneath that ugly coat of yours." Hey! It wasn't that ugly, it was just, multi-coloured and soft. "You look like a heptathlon athlete, amateur to be sure, not Olympic, but someone with that sort of muscle distribution. The lack of thigh definition but noticeable arm definition makes you not a weightlifter, for certain." She had an accent of a kind, not one she'd heard before, faintly... Cajun? If she wasn't mistaken.
Which, really, wasn't fucking important considering the words she just spoke. Taylor froze, tensed. Her eyes flicked to Emma, who looked back awkwardly, eyes not quite meeting her own, hovering over her body. What the fuck.
After a moment, the woman nodded, reached behind her, waving her fingers. A small, bland-looking man with shoulder-length curly ginger hair approached and handed her a bundle of clothes, all folded into a pile and enclosed within a plastic sleeve. She extended it out to Taylor, who more than a little awkwardly took it. It looked like more spring apparel, but with shorter sleeves, enough to show off the definition on her arms.
The woman smiled, and it was not a cruel smile, but it also wasn't exactly a happy smile. It was the sort of smile someone makes when they're very pleased with what they're about to do. "How would you like to make three hundred dollars?"
Taylor opened her mouth to reject, shut it. Glanced at Emma, who looked neutral, then at the woman, who looked almost excited. Shit. She could do a lot with that money, buy a few things, make a few new weapons, actually have something more complicated than strapping explosions to the butt end of a long, pointy stick.
...Ah, shit. Money really was humanity's weakness, wasn't it?
B-SIDE
"Surprise!"
Sophia stared blankly at the motley of Wards - annoyances - in the center of the communal room. They hadn't decorated it much, just strung up a banner from two parts of the roof, across which 'four years and counting' was written in a flowery, almost cursive font, but still, they'd had a party for this. Of all things.
They'd even bought a cake.
Missy, at the front of the pack, was probably the culprit. Dean, at least, knew her limits when it came to dealing with this sort of thing, and nobody else knew enough about her or particularly cared enough to try something this stupid.
...Still. Ugh. For fuck's sake, what was it with people forcing her to be emotional and other bullshit lately? First Taylor, then that entire hug thing that her therapist would no doubt crow about like a peacock, and now this? Couldn't she get a break from the sappy shit? Why couldn't people just let her enjoy knocking the teeth out of gangbangers and criminals? Goddamn.
"Thanks," Sophia drawled, monotone. Like the force of nature she was and unlike every other tween she'd been near, who would've probably deflated like a balloon with that sort of response, Missy managed to stand firm against the scathing lack of fucks she had to give about a surprise 'you survived four years of street-level child warfare' party. "You shouldn't have."
Seriously, they shouldn't've.
Apparently, though, her response was enough for them, or at least enough to let them feel guilt free about going after the cake they'd bought like starving vultures. Sighing, Sophia pulled her mask from her face, dropping it on the table, alongside her arm-mounted crossbows, as she passed. The patrol had been boring other than a few incidents involving a homeless guy, two broken bottles, and three Merchants, and even then that fight had lasted all of about five seconds before everyone besides her and Velocity - who had been, in hindsight, suspiciously quiet and restrained over the patrol - had been unconscious and ready for pickup by the local cops.
Reaching her bag, Sophia ducked down, unzipped it, and pulled out her phone. It was, like most people's, a pretty standard WIGIT phone; based on tinkertech software, with some hardware designed after some of the early examples of tinkertech. It hadn't copied it, nobody could do that, but they were distinct for having more processing power than most computers built in the last ten years, so it had to count for something.
Flicking it on, Sophia thumbed through Parapet - nothing - then missed calls - also nothing - before, finally, texts. There were a few, one from her mom confirming her and Taylor's next "date", another from Emma, included within a picture of Taylor scrambling out of a car, Alan's face lit up in mirth, Taylor's ears almost noticeably pink from something he likely said.
The second before she was about to turn it off, maybe get a piece of cake and ignore Dennis, it beeped. A new text, from Taylor - they'd swapped numbers during her first visit to the house - and... eugh. What the fuck was wrong with her? Did she really text like that? Why did she put three eggplant emojis at the end of the text? There were more goddamn emojis than text, and, no. You know what, that wasn't going to stand.
Are you fucking damaged? Type like a normal person.
There, that should—
no i'm bored bb [
Oh my god. Fucking hell.
Then find something interesting to do.
Another beep.
i'm being bullied by a cape
...Why the fuck was Victoria Dallon sitting across from Taylor?
oops lol brb one sec
Okay, so maybe she wasn't about to get a response to that question. Great.
"Who're you texting?" Missy asked, drawing Sophia's attention away from the idling text screen. She was still mostly in costume, albeit without her visor, and had taken for herself a corner piece, balancing the disposable plate on one hand as she used a fork to dig into the cake with the other. "A boyfriend, maybe? You don't talk about romantic interests."
...Huh. Maybe that could work here, too. It worked on Terry, for sure, and Emma was startled enough by it to probably set a pretty good benchmark. People were looking at her too, curious, especially Dennis. Maybe this would get him to stop staring at her ass when he thought she didn't notice?
Fuck it, in for a penny. The best part about it is that she wouldn't even be lying, so Dean would be just as clueless. Get fucked.
"A girlfriend, actually."
Dennis stumbled, dropping his plate of cake onto the ground. Carlos froze, mid-bite, Chris just smiled serenely towards her before going back to his own cake, Dean stared at her in a mix of bewilderment and shock, which, just, god was that fucking satisfying.
"Huh, okay," Missy said, not missing a beat, because she was Missy and Sophia was genuinely sure she would verbally plow through anything that got in her way, social norms or not. "What's her name?"
"Taylor."
"Do you like her?" Missy asked, looking up, wide-eyed and careful. Something about that question felt... weighted.
Sophia shrugged, pushing down on the nervousness. "I find her insufferable and I still agreed to date her, what does that say?" That wasn't even a lie.
It seemed that was the correct answer, or at least a good one, because Missy lit up in a smile. "That's nice. Do you want some cake?"
Glancing at the still-frozen Dennis - which was its own sort of immensely satisfying thing - Sophia shrugged.
"Sure, I could go for some cake."
Last edited: May 20, 2020
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OxfordOctopus
May 20, 2020
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Threadmarks A-TRACK 1.4
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OxfordOctopus
OxfordOctopus
(Unverified Jackanape)
She/Her
May 21, 2020
#240
A-TRACK 1.4
song credit: hozier - arsonist's lullabye
Finishing a project always felt like a victory, a hit of endorphins, happy juice that swirled around in the empty cavern that was her skull. It still, to a point, was like that, looking down at the finished Ahab in her hand still felt like she'd overcome arbitrary odds to make something important, but the feeling was weighted, heavy. This was a killer's weapon, it had no other purpose, no other use than to kill or maim. She could've argued the opposite for her other weapons, her darts and javelins could be used to take apart defences, but not Ahab, not with its refined propulsion system and disregard for conventional physics.
Pressing the button, Ahab folded into itself silently, leaving her with an unusually heavy length of metal the size of a television remote and about the thickness of one of those spray deodorant canisters. The entire form was sleek now, round and polished to a sheen as all of her other javelins had been. The only thing that really set Ahab apart was what was inside of it, which nobody could see, and the more sophisticated propulsion system at its butt end, meant to actually properly guide the thing rather than indiscriminately explode and throw it in one direction.
Rolling the collapsed javelin around in her hand, Taylor flicked the switch that sat on the opposite side of the front buttons. For a short moment, nothing happened, before finally, the javelin began to heat up, a low churning warmth that dissolved into aching, frostbite-worthy cold as heat ebbed and flowed. Rolling it around, she pressed her thumb back into the front button, extended it out to its full length again, and walked the length of her basement over to the cardboard boxes at the far other side. With almost morbid care, she leaned forward and slowly pushed the tip into the pile of cardboard, watched as it phased through with no resistance, accompanied by a small trail black-purple ash-like smoke curling around where the two materials intersected, rising loosely into the air before dispersing harmlessly into nothing.
Taylor pulled the javelin back, flicked the switch back off and collapsed it once again.
Walking back over to her workbench, she dropped Ahab to her left, away from her pile of collapsed javelins. She didn't want to get them mixed up or something. Her other projects stared back up at her, almost judgingly; she'd spent every single cent of those three hundred dollars on materials, and none of it had gone to waste. She'd finished Ahab, she had her throwing axe - surprisingly difficult to make, maybe she had gotten too reliant on sticks with pointy things at one end - built and ready for combat trials. She even made two more yellowjackets and three other darts: one which grew larger the farther she threw it, one which had an odd, non-newtonian property to it that made it sharper the harder it impacted something - she wasn't even sure how she made the damn thing, most of that night was a blur - and one with her... this would make fourth attempt to recreate containment foam filling a similar syringe-like glass belly.
Shutting her eyes, Taylor breathed. She was ready, as equipped as she could possibly be. She had a 'date' in a day, her parents were still planning their anniversary vacation - which she had managed to get herself out of going along for - and she'd even gotten the chance to put more than a few hours into tinkering because her mother had obligations at the university - something about updated protocols to defend against parahuman threats; apparently, someone held a university in New York hostage and the international coverage had security experts rattling their weapons for more stringent safety measures - and her father had been called down to the union building to do some overtime as a result of a new flood of shipping requests.
She couldn't fight the smile that forced itself onto her face. She wasn't fully restocked, and those three-hundred dollars had only gone far enough to replenish resources she had since stripped the house - as far as she could without notice, anyway - bare for. There was a definite need for a revenue stream, one that in her near future would have to be addressed. She'd heard... rumours, for lack of a better term, about Toybox and other Tinker collectives, ways to hand off tech for surplus money, resources, even other tech, but she felt uncomfortable about it. Toybox, for all that certain Tinkers thought them necessary, weren't well-liked; they had a policy of selling to everyone, and most people who bought from them were warlords or criminal elements. There was that entire controversy less than five months ago about them selling to resurgent white nationalists in South Africa, leading to the literal burning of a not-insignificant amount of Pretoria when their attempted coup went belly up.
Not to mention she wasn't exactly a Tinker who could just... tinker her way into getting a call with them. Her specialty was restrictive, good, sure, but restrictive in ways some of the more general ones weren't. She couldn't just figure out how to hotwire a connection to whatever people used to contact Toybox, it was so far outside of her specialty even her own power was pulling blanks. Well, mostly, it was giving her a few ideas on having network-connected projectiles that could learn and adjust to hit things, but it was vague, indistinct, nothing like the intensely visceral ideas that crawled into her head every so often.
None of this even took into account how she'd have to be certain that they weren't just going to hoodwink her or kill her. She knew the risks of being a Tinker, knew them viscerally well. She'd climbed out of the haze of her abuse and had been faced with the knowledge that she was something people wanted to possess, wanted to own and use to turn out an endless surplus of tech. She wasn't stupid, she was paranoid, she'd done everything in her power to avoid connecting her civilian identity to her cape one, kept her scavenging to sheet metal, with enough consistency that nobody who saw her picking the stuff up actually thought she was a Tinker, just someone with a fondness for workshopping. It wasn't even a lie, she did enjoy the feeling of working metal, it resonated with her, but...
No. These weren't problems she could face right now. She'd need someone to get her into contact with Toybox, and the only other person who knew her cape identity was the person she was faking being in a relationship with and who, as far as she could tell, was interested in capes, but not someone who could get her those connections.
Taking in a breath, Taylor steeled herself. She could deal with that later, for now? She had to plan.
[4 of 7]
Now Playing...
She had scoped the place out a few weeks ago, found it mostly on accident. She'd seen a convoy of trucks, bedecked in the sort of confederate and racist militia iconography that defined the average moron who belonged to the Empire, arrive at the little shack of a warehouse, bringing with them tarped boxes. She'd never gone back to check what it was, drugs or guns, it didn't matter. What mattered was that it existed, that nobody had caught onto the big fuck-off convoys of cars covered in racist memorabilia coming and going from it.
The reason why she hadn't hit it yet was because something about the entire situation felt just generally off. The warehouse itself was located in Pleasant Acre, the former industrial heart of Brockton. A bit of a boomtown - boom community? - for the eighties, it had drawn in a good portion of Brockton's current population and had been the target of a pretty flush cash flow that had dried up like a creek in a drought when capes and Endbringers had come around and reshuffled the world's priorities. Still, for all that a lot of Pleasant Acre was mostly decrepit, it wasn't like people didn't live or work in it, there were some still-functioning industrial jobs left and some were even close to the warehouse itself.
No, nothing about the situation smelled right. Someone would've noticed, and someone would've ratted, but nobody had, and as far as she could tell, nobody had any inclination to. It made her feel like this place was more important, something right between everyone's noses, a depot that existed, almost broadcasted its existence, but everyone who knew about it kept mum. Money, then, must've been traded around, and not any small amount of it; enough that it kept everyone off their backs, maybe under the guise of something unrelated to the Empire, sure, but definitely something that was illegal.
That or the cops themselves were being paid off to look the other way, and it hurt to say that it wasn't entirely unlikely. Brockton's police force had a long and sordid history with bigotry, racist attacks, jailing of black men, shooting unarmed civilians, claiming they thought they were capes, threats. Nothing about the Brockton Bay Police Force made her trust them not to take the cash and turn the other cheek, even if they knew it was the Empire.
So she had waited, and waited, and itched to go down there and burn the place to the ground, but she had waited.
Good things, obviously, come to those who wait, even herself.
She'd noticed over her period of waiting that while the inflow into the warehouse was pretty constant, there was close to no outflow. Nothing that went into the warehouse came out, and while she'd seen money trade hands once or twice, whatever they were packaging away in there, boxes in blue tarps, was either not of use yet, or was going to be used as excess resources, a stockpile. If it was drugs, even pretty cheap stuff like weed, the amount she'd seen them put in there alone would be enough to justify burning it down at this point. If it was the more expensive stuff, even better, and if it was guns? Well, she'd be putting a dent in them.
The gang itself, this time. Not their grunts, or the racist frat boys who now hesitated before they went out, who knew that she could always be there, waiting. No, she would hurt the Empire, she would hurt everyone associated with them, the Herren, the Clan.
Her heart thudded in her ears, fingers tense around the lip of the roof. She had to time this right, they might come in and out but they'd gotten sloppy, lazy. People didn't sit around to keep watch anymore, they all went in to make sure their product was packed away in as little time as possible. Impatient worker bees, buzzing to-and-fro. It would be a close shave, for certain, she guessed she had maybe fifteen seconds to block the door before someone would come out to get the next box, with some significant deviation due to a slightly staggered work pattern.
She had to be lucky, she had to be quick.
From the distance she was at, the people packing shit away weren't really identifiable. One was bald, and her eyes could just barely pick up on some ink along his skull, while the other had short black hair and enough stubble on his face to be seen from a distance away. She was pretty sure it was only two tonight, which meant fewer examples, but it made her job significantly easier.
Baldie crept into view, walking slowly, each step heavy and plodding. Behind him, Stubble was the same, holding up the other end of the tarped box, wobbling a bit from the weight of it. Her breathing slowed, she tensed, watched as they walked across the short length of pavement towards the door they'd propped open with a small bit of rock. Step-by-step-by-step-by—
Now.
She dropped from her perch - the roof of a long-abandoned 7-11 - the second Stubble started to pass in through the threshold, landing with a harsh squeal from the servos along her legs. She reached down as she sprinted, yanking a stone into her hand from the dusty ground, her power soaking into it, the line between it and her furthest reach flickering into focus in a way that wasn't quite vision. She sped up, her breath coming out as hard pants, tensed her arm, and threw, the rock sailing through the air in a long, unimpeded arc, slamming harshly into the rock that was blocking the door, the strength of her throw enhanced by the servos along her arms, hitting it hard enough to knock the stone free. The door, big and bulky, carried on by gravity and its own weight, slammed shut.
Her newest confoam dart was in her fingers, plucked from her belt, a breath before the door slammed shut. She skid to a halt, breathing in harshly to get the oxygen required to keep her hand steady, and threw that too, right at the door. It hit, shattered along its front, its contents starting first as a milk-coloured fluid before violently beginning to turn into foam, bubbling and frothing as it bloomed, widening until the door itself was completely covered alongside the wall. For a moment, she almost thought the foam was going to fail, she had only tested the concoction once and it still wasn't what she needed, not truly, but just as she was about to start reaching for other weapons, the foam began to turn grey and hard. Porous and dense like rock, the petrified foam hardened into place, its new, immense weight even making the door creak a little before everything stabilized.
Keeping to a jog, Taylor reached to the other side of her belt and pulled out a Firebug. This was another one of those creations she'd made out of anger, or on a whim, and had been horrified by the results. It was basically Tinkertech thermite with the capacity to spread, contained within a metal dart that was primed to shatter upon impact if the fat end hit or explode like a grenade if the needle pierced through something. It was actually nearly identical to the propellant she used to fuel her rocket javelins, but with a few tweaks that made the resulting flame spread like a brushfire.
She didn't even rely on her Thinker power for this one, didn't need to. She underhanded it, let it spin like a coin deciding her fate, before it hit the metal sheeting of the shanty warehouse and exploded like a firecracker, the flame catching on the metal immediately, crawling up the wall like a beast possessed. The main thing about the Firebug, and the propellant, was that its unique properties would burn out within about thirty seconds, leaving behind normal fire—it had something to do with how the compound she made was suspended in the plasma of the fire, it gave it its weird behaviour and ability to chew through metal.
Her jog led her around to the back entrance, the only way out, now that she had buried the door in porous stone. She slowed to a halt, breathing a bit harshly, her head spinning, but the world quickly reasserting itself after a few more moments of rest. Pulling at her lower back, Taylor withdrew a pair of knives, each one just sharp throwing knives, sure, but it would be enough. She didn't need her javelins, even if she brought them, and it would do to be more conservative with what she used tonight. She just didn't really want to exacerbate her resource issues if she couldn't help it.
As if on cue, the first guy bolted out through the back door barely a few seconds afterwards. He stumbled, patting down a pant leg that was smouldering, and didn't even see her from her place just to the left of the door. His back was wide open, she could even kill him if she wanted, not that she particularly did. She launched herself forward, shoulder-checking Stubble in his sweaty back, sending him onto his front a couple feet forwards, before hopping back a step and hurling the knife in her right hand directly into the palm of his left, piercing it through and nailing him right to the ground.
He screamed, bucked against it, but didn't manage to pull the knife free of his hand or the concrete beneath it.
Turning, Taylor caught sight of Baldie. She was right, to whatever ends, his head was covered in an eclectic mix of swastikas and 8s and all the other gang tag shit she was getting kinda tired of seeing. He was standing there, frozen, skinny body locked as, behind him, blue tarps caught fire against the unyielding onslaught of her firebug, burning wildly.
"You have two choices," Taylor said, not quite keeping the fondness out of her voice. Her heart pounded in her ears, a consequence of the exercise or her excitement, she couldn't be too sure. "One, you can burn to death in there, that fire is currently Tinkertech and it will eat through you like toilet paper. Two, you can come out here, stand still, and be pinned to the ground."
Baldie blinked once, twice, his face growing ashen, harsh. He stared at her, a wild look in his eyes. "Do you know what you did?"
"Burned down one of your caches, probably. They found a few of those in Texas," Taylor replied easily, watching the fire get closer, gnawing at the ground, eager to bite and spread and turn everything to ash.
Baldie stumbled forward, hissing as the fire licked at his arm. He wasn't quite through the threshold yet, but Taylor still slipped the other knife into her good hand. "You have no idea what you've done," he said thickly, nervously. "You can't even begin—"
Something far in the back of the warehouse exploded, a dull, ballistic noise that rattled not only the building, but herself as well. Little holes exploded across the sheet-metal surface of the building, shrapnel holes—it was guns, just as she expected. Baldie toppled forward, a scream exploding out of his mouth as a pair of raised red burns appeared across his legs, molten slag apparently catching on his skin. He fell, same as the other, face-down into the grass just far enough away to assuage her concerns about him dying from proximity or shrapnel, and before he could reach to grab his leg, to paw at the wound, she'd put a knife through the same leg that had been burnt.
His screams raised in pitch, into a wail of shrieking agony.
She felt no sympathy.
"You whore!" Baldie screamed out after, apparently, taking a little break to catch his breath, to stop being a bitch. "You fucking whore, they'll fucking kill you for this, rip you to shreds, I'll fucking relish the moment Hookwolf bends you over you fucking sl—"
Her boots met his mouth, toes covered in steel and the servos enhancing her kick just enough to jar his head back. She heard him swallow his own teeth.
Taylor smiled placidly, glanced behind her as the distant sound of sirens picked up, a dull roar of noise. Someone had probably called in the fire by now, if nothing else because it was dark and fire wasn't really supposed to spread like that. It was only the fact that she didn't want to have to meet a paramedic again and get chewed out for 'unreasonable violence' for the second time that she wasn't putting another knife into one of his arms, or maybe his shoulder. Somewhere painful, somewhere that would leave phantom pains, even after it had been long healed.
Turning, Taylor glanced lingeringly as the fire chewed, ate, burned higher and higher. The explosions were frequent now, concussive staccatos that rattled through the building, occasionally managing to penetrate the sheet metal exterior, but not as frequently as it had near the start. The entire warehouse was enveloped, but it wasn't spreading anymore; it'd burned through the suspended thermite, and could no longer feed on the metal, instead only on the plastic tarps and whatever other garbage or wood they had inside.
Baldie groaned, mouth thick with blood. Stubble just laid completely still, unmoving for all but the shallow rise and fall of his chest.
Crouching down, Taylor reached for Baldie, if only to ensure he bled down his chin instead of down his throat, climbing back to her feet once she'd turned his head enough to stop him from drowning in his own blood.
The sirens screamed, growing ever-closer. She could almost hear the rattle of wheels against potholed streets, the long approach of emergency vehicles and cops rushing to protect fascists from what they deserve.
Before Taylor could think better of it, she turned and ran.
B-SIDE
Watching the Heberts drive back down the driveway, Sophia followed them with her eyes, watched as the beat-up, coffee-stained hatchback pulled onto the main road, lights cutting through the contrasting dim of eleven o'clock in the middle-end of January.
Breathing out through her nose in a tired sigh, Sophia turned back, walked through the threshold of her front door, shutting it behind her. Her mother was asleep, had been since she'd gotten home at nine from a long workday, and while Terry was awake, he'd spent the last hour making sure Paula got to sleep, so he probably wasn't going to be impressed if she kept him awake.
Which kinda just left her bed, didn't it? It was eleven on a Friday and she really was considering just, fuckin' going to bed. How'd she become so lame? Honest to god.
Shaking her head, Sophia twisted the front door lock shut, bolted the other two, and made sure the chain was in place as well. Checking to make sure the security system was still on - once it hadn't been, and once had been enough to make sure she always checked it - she, begrudgingly, walked her way through the main hall, past the kitchen, down the stairs and into the basement—her basement, to a certain degree. Nobody else really used it besides her, though Paula had shown some interest in hanging around down there, and she wasn't about to refuse her baby sister that much.
Gumbo snuffled a bit from his seat on the couch when she finally made it down there, perking up but, with the sort of lazy, floppy behaviour that she had come to define him with, he laid back down no more than a few seconds later. She was tempted to bury her face in his coat, hug him tight to her body, he'd understand, he was trained to, but pushed down on the urge to do it. She was just... stressed, for no real reason, it was just one of those sorts of days and it made her temper a thin wire that would snap at a moment's notice.
Walking into the hallway, Sophia passed by the guest bedrooms and shouldered her own open, catching sight of her phone in the center of her bed, gently ruffling the otherwise immaculate sheets. The indicator at its top blinked, a bright red light, and she just hoped that it wasn't another one of those abominations Taylor texted her. There had been three since she'd done it back then, all with gratuitous eggplant usage and emojis that she didn't know existed until recently.
Why, exactly, the child of an English professor typed with the same sort of inaccurate ease as a third-grader was beyond her, but if it was to spite her own mother - something she doubted, Taylor seemed kinda reliant on her Mom - then it clearly wasn't working too well.
Plucking her phone from her bed, Sophia drummed in the required eight-digit number that all of the PRT-issued WIGIT phones came with. The first thing that stuck out was the PRT warning, which she swiped to in a heartbeat. Arson, great, lovely, not too far from her home either, apparently not just that, but arson on a fucking building full of explosive ammunition and weapons. Great. Fantastic. Suspects included Shrike - due to the state of the people found at the scene - and, of course, who else but Gambit, the local ragtag villain group who had a fetish for pyromania.
Fucking Gambit. Seriously, it was bad enough that it was run by Grue, but the fact that it had both Circus - grab bag, some sort of spatial-sense Thinker ability, a pocket space tied to touching objects, and pyrokinesis - and the recently christened Spitfire - lazy name, but capable of melting fucking concrete with the flame she produced from her mouth - just kinda made a shit situation worse. It used to just be Circus and Grue, they made for a pretty decent thievery-salt-the-earth duo and were nearly impossible to take down with Grue's darkness not impeding Circus' spatial sense, letting the clown freak fight blind while everyone else couldn't, but add onto that a high-level pyrokinetic blaster with synergies with Circus and, well, they'd become a lot more important over the last few months, that much was for certain.
...Which just left the other suspect, Taylor. Fan-fucking-tastic. Two people were found speared to the ground with knives, great, one without teeth, which was fine, Nazis getting hit in the mouth is kinda worth it, but neither were able to talk - one because he kept demanding a lawyer, the idiot, and the other because, y'know, no teeth - and the only evidence to support Shrike's possible inclusion was the fact that they were stabbed with tinkertech knives, which could still be Circus. It wasn't like Gambit didn't use Tinkertech when they got access to it, it was just that Shrike had an M.O. and this kinda fit.
Shit, she couldn't even ask Taylor if that was her, because this was all classified shit and none of it would make it to the news. Great. Fun. Fuck, if Taylor joined Gambit, they were going to have words.
Whatever, she was working herself up. Flicking off of the PRT newscast, past the few notifications for Parapet, and onto her messages, she was met with... well, not much. None from Taylor, or her handler, or any of the other Wards. Emma, at least, had sent something, maybe she'd text back, distract herself, just like the therapist ordered. Thumbing onto the screen, Sophia froze as the first out of two images loaded. It was Taylor in a clearly professional shot, wearing pretty generic sports-wear, a crop-top like thing, some short shorts that clung to her legs, with a windbreaker thrown over both of them.
The first thought that came to mind was, oh my god, Taylor Hebert has abs. The second thought wasn't so much something you could explain in words and instead expressed itself by the sudden lurch of her arm as she fucking chucked her damn cellphone right back down into her bedspread with enough force to make the thing bounce.
Breathing a bit heavily, Sophia stared at the phone, which almost seemed to be judging her.
Why the fuck did she do that.
Why.
Reaching back out, Sophia plucked the phone, tapped on the image to make it minimize and get out of her sight, and did the same for the second picture, another photo of Taylor in decent looking sportswear, though the windbreaker and long track pants covered up way more this time around, thankfully. Scrolling up to get context, Sophia swallowed a groan of annoyance.
Thought you might like to see Taylor's first photoshoot ;) Don't worry, I asked permission before sending these.
Goddammit, Emma.
Last edited: May 21, 2020
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OxfordOctopus
May 21, 2020
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Threadmarks SIDE-TRACK PUNITION.1
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OxfordOctopus
OxfordOctopus
(Unverified Jackanape)
She/Her
May 22, 2020
#287
SIDE-TRACK PUNITION.1
Spoiler: AN CW
Pushing herself over the lip of the fence, Aisha landed in a crouch on the pavement, not even bothering to keep the grin off of her face.
She'd been scoping out the wall for a while now, but it wasn't until last night that she'd thought to do anything about it. Tagging was risky business when you preach for peace, especially when you do it in Nazi territory, and she'd been reluctant to put anything on a wall even close to where some of the hotspots were. However, considering someone just blew up one of their warehouses less than ten hours ago, Aisha was pretty sure they were a bit preoccupied.
Now, whether or not that warehouse was Shrike's work or Gambit's, well, she didn't honestly care. Nazis lost a lot of shit in that fire, apparently, enough guns packed away in one place to get an investigation about it called up. Federal goddamn police were actually mucking their way down to good ol' Brockton to see what they could do about hostile weapon stockpiles. They'd do jack fucking shit because she was pretty sure most of the national police force and shit was in the pocket of every racist they could find on a map, but, hey, it'd bring just enough heat to make them squirm.
Fucking up a Nazi stockpile full of assault weaponry was a good deed regardless of who did it. Well, if a Nazi did it, then it's a fuck up and you should laugh about it, but whether it was a girl who impaled Nazis all the time or if it was a pair of girls who set fire to shit all the time - plus the shadow dude, can't forget about the least interesting member of Gambit - Aisha personally didn't think it mattered. Fucking them up was a moral positive, in the end, and another step for the cause.
Creeping over to the wide, tall concrete wall, Aisha shucked her backpack and unzipped it. Shoving aside all the garbage her teachers foisted off on her like ungrateful morons who didn't know what their jobs were, Aisha reached down and started piling her good ol' cans of Rusto out on the ground beside her. She had enough colours available, that was for sure, and she had a perfectly clear image of what she was about to draw in her head. It wouldn't do to take her black book everywhere, if even one person attributed all those tags to her, not only would she be completely fucking murdered by the local Nazi population, but she'd also probably get arrested, and everyone knew what cops were like around black girls who didn't respect them.
Grabbing her pair of brushes next, Aisha stepped back and took a long look at her canvas. It was tall, the side of a concrete brick-like building not too far off from Pleasant Acre. Nazis hung around it a lot, not this wall in particular but the front, flexing and showing off like morons. She wasn't exactly sure what the relevance of the place was, outside of being a meeting destination for all the white boys in her class who wanted to start taking up genocide as a pastime, but it got tons of foot traffic, which meant they'd all see her shit when she was done.
Now, speaking honestly, Aisha had never really expected herself to be an artist. Seemed kinda fucking boring on the onset, quaint and something a teacher might foist off on her to try to get a leash around her throat, something to keep her bound. Really, though, it was the opposite, she thrived on it, expressed herself, and got to play double duty as a menace to the racists that lived on her street by tagging over their gang symbols with shit like paintings of black girls or rainbows or the hundred other things Nazis responded violently to. She'd actually seen some dumbass skinhead try to hit one of her paintings with a fuckin' bat, like that'd do anything to the brick facade she'd sprayed over. Moron.
The shika-shika-shika of her first can was always a sort of relief, grounding her. It was like the pistol firing, the start of her sprint. She'd have to do this fast, not sloppily, she'd tagged enough that people had noticed her style and it would do nothing good for her rep if she was sloppy, but she'd have to be quick. There was risk enough being a black girl on Pine Street, let alone being a black girl defacing their favourite bit of property.
Her first spray was a long curve, a line to define the front of the face. People acted like using a brush was a crutch, but she thought otherwise; people just didn't want to fuck with the tools of one's trade outside of painting over shit, but she knew better. She sharpened those damn edges, made the bumps and curves that defined the profile of a face looking sides pop, made it clear and distinct. She shook again, filled in hard around the cheekbones, pausing to swap for a darker brown, closer to black, to give further definition, little sprays to give contrast. She smoothed and blended with her brush like she was doing makeup, like this was her face she was painting and not some nondescript black girl with no identity outside of one being used in defiance of the shit people who lived in the shithole that was Brockton.
White, next, she got the eye, then coloured in above it with the sharpest black she'd been able to buy. Thick eyelashes, pouty lips, nothing a white girl without a suction cup and a black sharpie could call their own. Her next sprays were surgical, colouring in the skin, warm browns and darker ones, getting the contrast, making it clear just who—
Someone behind her clapped.
Aisha flinched, can dropping from her fingers as she spun around. There were four of them in total, three blocking off the way to the fence she'd climbed over, and one at the front. He was tall, wearing a long-sleeved red sweater beneath a black metal chest-plate, black pants, black-and-red boots, and he had a mask. Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck.
"Like a chimp smearing its own shit on the wall," the blonde cape said, his voice a low timbre. He stared at her work for a moment, face curling into a sneer. "Trying to make a point, are we?"
Shit, shit, Aisha, fucking think. What did Brian say about Empire capes? Right, strike out all the girls. There was, uh, Krieg, who had black hair, so not this fucker, there was Hookwolf, whose appearance she knew off heart, there was Victor who was—was, shit. Blonde hair, black metal breastplate, intimidating figure, simple domino mask, spoke with a completely neutral southern accent, the rough Texan edge worked down to something between the Brockonite accent and the one he'd clearly originally had.
Fuck. FUCK.
"You know what's the worst, too?" Victor said, almost frankly. He was leaning against the wall now, eyes narrowed on her. "The fact that some fucking piece of shit Tinker mutilated one of my best men, knocked out his front teeth, fucked up his world. Blew up our damn supplies, made a mockery out of us. The fucking degenerates under Lung are pushing in on our territory, the Merchants are too, and to top it all off, some fucking little whore has been running around, putting up tags all over our shit when we're not looking."
Glancing behind her, Aisha could just barely see the other fence. It was unguarded, thankfully, but... she wouldn't make it in time, Victor was too close.
"So, you know what I thought? 'Well, might as well get some of the boys and make an example of her', after all, we can't let people go thinking we're easy bait, can we? It wasn't hard to track you, you're hardly subtle." Victor smiled, a cold, vile thing, all perfectly-white teeth.
Aisha swallowed thickly. Fuck, fuck.
Victor pushed himself off the wall and started to approach, step-by-step, confident. "You know what else? I don't even think I'll let them get your dirty blood on their hands," he explained, sounding almost giddy. "No, you know what I'm going to do? I'm going to rip the fucking artistry out of your head and use it for myself. You'll be a good example, I think, of the benevolence of our cause. Maybe next time they'll keep you fucking animals on a leash."
It was hard to explain the sensation. It built up, a gradual pull against some part of her brain, a souring headache that was almost ignorable if not for the fact that she was focusing on it. It grew in intensity, building like a pressure, pushing against her mind, her focus. It was how it ripped the ideas from her mind, how the mental image of that black girl, lips pouted, looking imperial, like a fucking queen, blurred and rippled, torn from her mind. It was the way that the horror set in, a sudden amnesia, an inability to focus on drawing, on ideas, they all went blurry, churned, dripped like tears from her skull. Being taken from her, going into the hands of people who hated her, who held her down, stripped her wings for feathers.
She scrambled back, her legs giving out, laughter rattling out from someone. She could feel their eyes like burns, the way Victor kept getting closer, kept following her. She screamed, the pain spiking for a moment, raw and chafing against the grooves in her head. She tried to get away, tried to scramble away but he just kept laughing and pushing and—
Her freedom, being taken. They were watching her, laughing, jeering as Victor stood no more than five feet away from her, the headache growing more extreme, intense, confusion setting in, terror accompanying it. She didn't want it, she wanted to draw, she liked painting, it was freeing it was her and he kept pulling and ripping and her mind it hurt hurt hurt hu—
Something snapped, cracked. She had the impression of something come over her, like she was splitting in two, like she was falling, like she was hurtling towards a round, blue dot, focused and speaking and—
Pushing herself up from the ground, Aisha scrambled backwards. Victor was on the ground too - how? - and only now coming too, a groan on his lips as he pulled himself up to a stand. The other three looked spooked.
Something in her mind twisted, clicked. Victor was a beacon of light, a dot in the shade, a distinct entity in the world around her. It wasn't sight, couldn't be called that, but it was relative to her, a sense that he was there, and that nothing else was near him. The dot spoke to her, she wasn't sure how, but it did, and with it, ideas came, a slow trickle of steals skills, and needs to replenish or continue using them, and other abstract ideas that had no place in her mind, intrusive thoughts that banged at the front of her skull.
She reached out to the dot, pressed on it with fingers-that-weren't fingers, the dot wavering in her vision-that-wasn't-vision. The panic jumped back into her throat, the need to do something, to stop him, to fix this, and she pushed and pushed and pushed and pushed and pushed until something in the dot snapped and it spasmed wildly. Victor staggered from his mid-stand, hand coming up to his head, a croak bellowing out through his lips.
"Th'fuck, wh'dyo do to me?" He asked, eyes glazed, hazy. "Why can't I? How do I use my powers? How? You whore, what did you do?!"
Aisha didn't know, didn't care. She was turning, sprinting, the hollering behind her ignored, distant. Her fingers met the chain of the fence and she was up and over it in record time, her backpack abandoned. A loss she could deal with, she didn't care, she needed to be out, to escape, to get away.
Her feet met concrete and she ran.
She wasn't really sure how or when she got home. Her legs burned, her second vision-that-wasn't-vision was blank, empty. Nobody here was like Victor, a cape, like her, some part of her whispered. She jabbed her key into the door, turned the lock, pushed it open to the thick pungent smell of weed that clung to everything. Home sweet home, effectively. Mom didn't seem to be around, but she also didn't look around to check, it was just as likely she was getting fucked by Jeremy, her new dealer.
Passing through the cramped, dirty living room, Aisha walked along the length of the hall to the very back, her room. She pushed her door open, shut it behind her and walked the few feet to her bed, dropping face first down into it.
Fuck. She could barely breathe, every bone and muscle in her body was little more than tense knots, tight aching restriction that made her fingers cramp. She tried to shut her eyes, to shut out the noise, the screaming in her skull, the urge to hide hide hide, but it never abated, only got worse in the silence of her own head. Pushing herself back to her feet, Aisha slumped to her knees and plucked her sketchbook - black book sounded cooler, in her opinion - out from under her bed and nabbed one of the loose Crayola markers off the floor to go along with it. She'd lost her school supplies, but whatever.
Flipping to the first empty page, Aisha thought back to it, to the queen. Shakily, desperately, she tried to start out with a circle, set the framework, draw in big bulky colours, and... nothing. She stared down at the scribble that was her attempt at drawing a circle, at something she had managed to learn how to do years ago. Her mind was blank, flat, it looked like a toddler's attempt at drawing a wheel, or someone trying to make a circle with their non-dominant hand. Ugly. No spirit. Just a mess.
"Aisha!" Mom's voice boomed the length of the apartment, a screechy tinny that made her headache. "Aisha, get your ass over here! Your school called."
Had she even answered the phone when she did? Wouldn't've she just been completely out on her ass with whatever new drug Jeremy hooked her on?
The Jeremy who was always just a little too close, a little too eager to find reasons to punish her, to hurt her. Mom didn't care about school, she hadn't ever, would never, it would make sense if it was Jeremy pushing her for this, pushing to get her vulnerable, weak, cornered.
"Aisha!"
She was packing clothes into her replacement bag from elementary school before she'd really mentally thought about doing it. There was no rhyme or reason to it, half of the shirts and pants and underwear she stuffed inside were dirty but not a whole lot of her shit ever was. Mom didn't do laundry very often and the few times she'd tried herself she'd fucked something up and just never bothered to try again.
"Young lady!" Jeremy shouted, his voice rattling, booming. Young lady, like the drug dealer appealed to a sense of propriety or professionalism when he spent most of his day in her mother's bedroom. "You get out here right now! We have to talk about your misbehaviour."
Her bag was too bloated, too packed tight, it'd basically explode the second she unzipped it but she didn't care. Couldn't. She just barely spent enough time to grab her phone - twenty percent battery, but whatever - and shouldered her way out the door of her room. Jeremy was there at the other end, staring heated daggers at her, and she ignored him, ignored the way him blocking the way into the living room set her teeth on edge, made her want to scream and claw and kick. She lashed one arm out, yanked on the door, throwing it out to the side with enough force to make the frame creak.
She heard him yell her name, a bellow of anger, but she was sprinting down the apartment hallway before she could process it, and then down the stairs, towards the main floor.
She had to be anywhere but here, anywhere at all.
B-SIDE
Brian knew something was wrong when he arrived at the apartment building. It was just a feeling, a deeply familiar one, the same sort of one he'd experienced when Aisha had texted him and he'd come in on one of his mother's conquests staring at his younger sister with lurid focus. It was the atmosphere, a thick knot of tension that got worse as he climbed the three flights of stairs up to his mother's floor, growing almost choking as he walked the stretch of long, unwashed hallway tile, the smell of sweat and smoke clinging to everything.
He didn't even bother to knock when he got to the door, just slipped his hand around the knob, twisted and pushed. The apartment looked the same, for the most part, but...
"Aisha? You stupid child, did you fin—oh, Brian." Mom stumbled out from the hallway, eyes glazed, unfocused, high. Not drunk, she wasn't sloppy enough for that.
Setting his jaw, Brian stared at the woman who gave birth to him. "Where's Aisha?"
His mother snorted. "How the fuck should I know? She ran off yesterday after disrespecting Jeremy."
Not again. "Any idea why?"
"Nope," his mother popped the 'p', before giggling helplessly. "She never tells me aaaanything. Or Jeremy. She should be a better daughter."
Breathing in slowly, Brian passed by his mother, walking back towards Aisha's room. He ignored her snapping at him about respect, didn't care, and pushed his way in. Her room had been ransacked was his first assumption, but that wasn't quite right either. It was messier, yes, and the drawers were open and pulled away, but there were gaps, places where clothes had been the last time he had visited a few days ago. Sizable ones, at that.
Frowning, Brian glanced around. Her spare bag was missing too, had she gone out for a sleepover and just opted not to tell his mother? It would make sense, she'd done it before, but... His eyes narrowed in on the book, a sketchbook, by the looks of it. Walking over, he flipped the thing open and felt himself get a little colder, harder. These were good, really good, done with basic markers by the looks of it but they were all stylized and far beyond what he thought Aisha could do, artistry wise. She'd never shared this part of herself with him.
Something about them bothered him, were familiar. He thumbed through it, page after page after page before he came on a series of what looked like tags. Tags he had seen on the building next to Emily's house when Alex - Circus - had invited him over to hang out with the two of them. Tags like the ones that had been popping up around the city, usually closely following the Shrike. A fan, he'd assumed, someone with a good grasp on art and impact and a risky thing to do, to boot. She could've copied these but... no, the notes beside them were too detailed, the sketches too prototypal to be anything but the original versions.
He flipped to the latest page. There was an attempt at a circle, aborted, looking more like a scribble, sloppy and messy. Part of the page had been ripped, crinkled by tensed fingers. What had Aisha gotten herself into?
Shit, this might be more serious than he thought.
Tucking the book away, Brian turned and marched back out, shutting his sister's door as he went. Mom was gone, probably back to her room with Jeremy, and he didn't try to say goodbye to her, simply pushing out through the front door and making his way towards the stairwell. He knew a fair number of Aisha's haunts, her friends, it'd take a while but he could look over them all, and maybe a few he thought she might be near.
If she was safe, just being bratty, that would be fine. Perfectly fine. Safety was paramount, for sure, and he didn't really care if she was an ass to their mom. Sometimes, his mother really did deserve it, though he mostly thought her addiction was the issue, not the woman herself. Not that the two could be separated, she'd been hooked for such a long time that it wasn't clear where the drugs started and where his mother ended.
No, he had to be sure, just in case.
It was close to seven by the time he finished looking, and there was nothing. Not a single sighting of Aisha, not from her friends - or even her friends friends, who he had pushed into asking around, just to be sure - and she hadn't been at any of the haunts she usually went when she was overwhelmed. She was missing, wholly and totally, and he knew for a damn fact that his mother would do precisely jack shit and his father would try to take it over if he mentioned it. He'd even called her a few times, but it always went straight to voice mail. The phone was either dead or destroyed and he wasn't sure what would be worse.
Which, really, only left one option.
Alex picked up after a few rings. "Brian?" They asked groggily, sounding half-awake. "The fuck is up my dude?"
"I think I need to use some of the money," he said, keeping his voice as level as he could.
There was a short burst of silence.
"Why?" Alex asked, sounding much more like Circus, much less like Emily's mischievous partner.
Brian breathed in, tried to center himself. "Aisha's gone missing, and I don't think it's because she didn't care to tell anyone she was going to hang out with someone."
"Alright," there was no pause this time around, just acceptance. "I'll wake Emily up and tell her. Should we gather somewhere? What do you even need the money for, anyway?"
Sighing in relief, Brian leaned against the bit of underpass he was under, listening to the cars hurtle over it, the canvas of tags and graffiti along the underside, so familiar looking now that he had context. "We're going to see someone I met when I started out, she should be able to help. If you want to come along, you can, but come costumed and in something comfortable. We'll probably be there for a while."
The Palanquin gleamed in the dark, the rhythmic booming of music loud and hard to ignore. The nightclub itself was caught between two buildings, both boutiques of some sort, and both who turned their lights off come night time, leaving it the sole beacon in the dark for the street. The line was long, girls and guys anywhere from 14 to their late 40s lined up in a row, waiting for their chance to slip in and have some fun. It helped that the Palanquin was lax on who could get it and who couldn't, you just needed ID to buy alcohol.
Glancing back at Circus and Spitfire, Brian nodded. He walked around the crowd, getting one jeer before the sight of his helmet made the person shut up. The skull that had been painted on the inside, white and bright against the black-tinted glass, it shut most people up when they saw it, and now was no different. Coming to a halt next to the bouncer, he waited until he was done telling off a gawky, blonde boy and telling him to go home.
"I'm here to see Tabby," Brian said easily, fingers tensing around the bag he'd put a not-insignificant amount of money into.
The bouncer raised an eyebrow, glanced down at the bag. "Her fee?"
Brian nodded, jostling the bag for effect.
"The clown and gas-mask with you, then?"
Another nod.
"Right, go on in. Do not go to the dance floor, there's a path that leads right up to the area where she's in. If you cause trouble, you get fucked, we clear?"
"Crystal," Brian grit out, trying not to sound as frustrated as he was.
Nevertheless, the bouncer stepped to the side, letting the three of them in.
Much like how the Palanquin outside was a tower of neons and light, the inside seemed to copy that. There were regions of sheer blackness, places carefully chosen to let the shadows soak in, the light framing the room in just the right way to leave the impression that it was only where the light was that anything existed. It was a neat effect, he personally thought, but he didn't spend any time enjoying it, simply following the rules, keeping to the raised area that surrounded the dance floor and walking towards the long stretch of metal stairs that led up into the second.
Circus and Spitfire kept close to him, silent solidarity for what he was about to do. They had argued about money before, but neither of the two had said anything against his decision to put down more than a few thousand dollars on a cape neither of them had heard much about. Of course, most people knew that Tabby existed, she did do jobs like these, but... well, very few people bothered to get to know her, or her goals.
The music was dampened significantly on the second floor, only letting some of the bass through, giving the space a detached feeling. On its own, the second floor was kinda boring, just long stretches of concrete floor with couches placed around, accompanied by tables. Some people were knocked out on them, likely from Newter, who he couldn't see but knew generally hung around when Faultline's crew wasn't on a mission, and he found Tabby almost instantly, sequestered away in that godawful red leather chair that clashed with the otherwise pretty bland environment, placing her like a beacon, drawing everyone's eye.
Tabby was a teenager, not much younger than him. Long blonde hair framed a tabby-cat themed half-mask that covered everything from her nose up. She wore a cat-suit, because of course she did, and it, much like the mask, was stylized with tabby cat patterns, though at the center, between her collarbone, the pattern was interrupted by a single stylized eye, white in colour and a strong contrast to the rest of her outfit.
Walking the length of the room, he met Tabby's green eyes, which flicked between him and the bag of cash, before a lazy, smug smile slid across her face. "Heya, Broody."
"Tabby," Brian said, keeping his voice carefully blank, even if she knew he wasn't even close to that calm emotionally. "This is serious."
For a moment, he almost thought she'd keep it up, try to get a rise out of him, before with an actual pout, she slumped. "You're no fun," she complained, reaching out with one hand, wiggling her fingers. "Give it here."
He handed the bag over, which she quickly unzipped, glanced inside, then nodded, dropping it off to the side.
"Right, now that's confirmed, what can I do for you, Grue?" Her posture had shifted slightly, from the slouched, almost cat-like way she'd splayed over the chair, now to a more refined one, back straight, leg slightly folded over the other, one elbow pressed into the arm of the chair, fist beneath her chin.
Pulling the sketchbook free, Brian handed that over, which Tabby immediately began to wordlessly thumb through. "My sister's gone missing. I can't find her, I looked literally everywhere I know she's been, and... I think she got into some shit."
Seaglass eyes glanced up from him, barely hidden from behind the edge of the sketchbook. "No kidding," Tabby commented, eyes flicking back down as she kept paging through the sketchbook.
"I need your help finding her." Brian continued, fighting the urge to do it on his own, knowing better.
Tabby hummed, finally getting to the end, freezing. She hesitated for a few moments, running her thumb over the messy circle.
"Yeah, I think you do," Tabby said, after another moment of pause. "I'm in. Money's being kept, I'll have to put myself off the roster for an upcoming outing to Vegas, which is a shame, but... yeah. I think you do."
Brian breathed out, mostly in relief.
"Let's find your sister."
Last edited: May 22, 2020
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OxfordOctopus
May 22, 2020
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Threadmarks A-TRACK 1.5
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OxfordOctopus
OxfordOctopus
(Unverified Jackanape)
She/Her
May 23, 2020
#356
A-TRACK 1.5
The atmosphere at school was tense, a taut wire ready to snap. It was the way people hunched, the way they kept to tight groups with valleys between them and the next. It was the way that some of the Empire kids had stopped wearing gang colours, the new security guards placed around the doors of the school, the tension between the groups. Sure, none of the gangs ever really got along, but now it was... more, an underlying intensity that made her skin crawl.
She knew better than to think she wasn't responsible for it. Not all of it, she knew, but she'd been the one to light the fire and it had just spread from there. She'd kept up to date on it, the Empire rallies they'd had to disperse over the weekend, the constant posturing, the sudden disappearance of Victor from the public displays, Cass—Othala notably alone, the pictures she'd seen displaying her with a stiff posture, tense shoulders, fingers tight knots at her hips.
Nothing like she remembered her being. She looked violent, hateful. Ready to lash out and hurt something without a target.
"You're thinking too loudly," Emma said, voice a bit thin. "Wanna talk about it?"
Taylor glanced up to meet her eyes, shifting the knuckles along her jaw to drop her hand back down to the table. Emma was seated across from her, desks pressed together for the impromptu study hall with Mr. Gladly's absence. She looked strained, stressed, which wasn't a surprise, everyone did. "Just thinking about how we probably shouldn't be at school," Taylor replied, glancing back down at the slew of papers scattered across her desk.
Emma hummed. "They closed Arcadia and Immaculata, I think."
"Aren't we closer to the warehouse?" The warehouse she'd burned down, the warehouse full of what had been an estimated hundreds of thousands of dollars of weapons and ammunition. Taylor bit down on the guilt, pushing it down. There was nothing she could do about it now, no take-backs, and she wasn't even really sure she would if she was given the chance. Burning that place down had diminished the Empire, taken so much from them, taken weapons that would've been used to kill others.
Shrugging, Emma glanced back down at her own work, pausing for a few moments before quietly pulling her phone out. She clearly wasn't in any headspace to do work either. "I don't think it matters, Arcadia has the Wards, Immaculata is private; they prioritized safety."
A lot of people had. The school was paradoxically empty and full, a lot of students had just skipped, whether by a command from their parents or simply because they didn't want to risk it. Sure, it wasn't a warzone or anything out there - yet - but it was getting worse with every hour, with every new attempt at a demonstration, with every new cape fight. Teachers were absent too, not just Mr. Gladly, her Math teacher for the first period hadn't come in to work, they were apparently sick, but Taylor doubted it, and substitutes were unwilling to come to school, so that had been a study hall as well.
It left gaps in the school, crowds of students diminished, pockmarked, with absentee teachers and a generally strained atmosphere. It felt like a primed explosive, a gas-soaked rag, all waiting for that spark to rip itself apart.
"Sophia's absent too," Taylor muttered, not finding it in herself to disguise the disappointment behind that. Emma shot her a wry look, which she returned with a proffered middle finger. Cheeky bitch.
Emma just laughed, all soft and whispery. She couldn't laugh too loud, nobody wanted to spook someone else and start something. "Missing your girlfriend, huh?"
She wasn't so unaware to say that she didn't. Sophia's presence was nice, weighted, a way to distract herself, and her absence was felt, pronounced. "Did her mom just refuse to let her go?" Taylor asked, after a moment.
Emma nodded. "Seemed that way. Which, speaking of, why isn't Uncle Danny wrapping you in eight layers of bubble wrap and locking you in your room?"
"Because you said you were going," Taylor answered honestly. The good morning text accompanied by complaints about still having to go even when the entire city seemed like it was going to shit had been what really pushed her to do it. "They said I could stay home, but I pushed the issue. Said you were going, and I didn't want to risk leaving you alone, they understood."
Hell, not even Madison - not that she could probably do anything about it if someone started something - was here. Emma would've been alone for all but the handful of her hangers-on, and that wasn't really a safe environment, not now. People were looking for a reason to fight, to lash out, and targeting a crowd of girls who were 'too loud' or who rejected them was just the sort of thing someone would do.
Emma flushed prettily, glanced away for a few moments. "Thank you," she said, quietly.
"I wouldn't leave you behind, Ems," Taylor said simply, which got another rise of red to Emma's face, one that crawled over her ears, soaked into her skin. "It's not like we've done much, anyway, it's not much of a school if nobody is here to teach, huh?"
That got another quiet laugh out of Emma, the red receding from her skin. "I'm pretty sure whoever provides substitute teachers told Winslow to go away," she whispered, sounding almost conspiratorial.
"It wouldn't surprise me," she agreed, thinking back to the size of some of the rallies on Sunday. "They're considering calling in the National Guard."
"Wouldn't be the first time," Emma pointed out, which, fair. The National Guard and Brockton had a unique relationship, in that they'd been in the city more than a few times to prevent riots and revolts, with aid from the local PRT and Protectorate departments. One of the major ones she had any lingering memory of was watching the post-Marquis riots take place on a boxy television, being held strangle-tight by her mother at the sight of it. She'd done research later - the memory had stuck with her - and it hadn't been pretty, the huge power vacuum left over from his arrest had resulted in one of the largest gang wars in known history for the east coast, on par with the Boston Games.
It was only a faint, distant hope that something like that wouldn't happen here. It wasn't likely, Marquis had run his gang from a uniquely top-down position, more so than anyone else. Even if someone did manage to arrest and put Kaiser in the Birdcage, he'd just be replaced by Hookwolf or Purity, though the latter was up for debate. Apparently she was trying her hand at being a hero, which was funny, considering the death rate of encounters with her hadn't changed, neither had her targeting minorities.
Taylor personally thought the entire thing was a farce. If she really wanted to turn the other cheek, she'd turn herself in, or just fucking leave and go to ground and live out her life as a civilian instead of lighting up the sky every couple of days to brutalize minority groups, gang members or not. Her posturing, her claims, they fell flat, tasted more like she wanted the praise of being a hero, the glorification, without having to change herself.
For all that she was fucking reviled and hated for her behaviour, at least she never pretended to be anything other than what she was: Shrike.
The tip of Emma's middle finger skipped across the tip of her nose, jolting her out of her thoughts. Looking at Emma, she opened her mouth, closed it.
"Sorry," Emma said, completely unapologetic. "You looked really upset, I just wanted to get you back in the moment."
Shutting her eyes, Taylor leaned back into the creaky plastic of her chair, opening her eyes a crack once she'd finally managed to ground herself. "Thanks," she said, voice uncomfortably rough, bristly. She cleared her throat as softly as she could, swallowing a few times. "Bad thoughts."
Emma's features softened, a gentle expression on her face. "It's okay, Taylor. You have every right to be upset about this sort of thing."
She did, huh?
She wasn't sure about that. No, she was pretty sure she didn't. She had been vulnerable, a target, sure, picked out by Brent, sure, and he had done that to her, she hadn't done it to herself, but... it had been her weakness, her inability to fight her way out, to be stronger. It hadn't only been his strength that had kept her cowed, miserable, terrified and twisted, it had been her weakness.
No. No, she really didn't have any right to that feeling. Not anymore, not ever. To have any right to it would make her a victim, and she wasn't. Couldn't be. She breathed in, not sharply, but enough that Emma noticed, that Emma looked, that her face scrunched into concern. Reaching out, gentle touches and costless softness, Emma laced their fingers together, tightened down, pressed their palm-against-palm, her grip strong enough to ground her, to drag her a little back down to earth, away from her thoughts.
She had to be strong. There was no other option. She had so much to lose.
B-SIDE
Settling down into her seat, Missy slumped down in the seat to her right and Chris in the seat to her left. The other Wards took up their chosen places, Dennis next to Carlos, who was next to Chris, and Dean next to Dennis. She noticed the others, a large crowd of PRT officers a few rows down, New Wave picking a spot between them and the few members of the Brockton Protectorate who weren't up on stage, ready for the presentation. The independents - seeing as there weren't really any corporate teams in Brockton, not anymore - took seats in clusters, little pockets of two or three capes, staggered out among the rows, but far enough apart that intercape politics was clearly still in play.
What a headache.
Glancing up at the stage, Sophia tried to look suitably attentive as Armsmaster prowled across the stage floor, Miss Militia following just behind him. Coming to a halt next to the mic, Armsmaster scanned the crowd, before finally folding his hands behind him.
"If you have been invited to this meeting, you are either affiliated with the Protectorate or PRT, are an unaffiliated hero with less than two strikes on record, a member of a team which is partnered with the Protectorate, or a vigilante with none and at least two months of active service." He began, his voice carrying through the mic, to the various speakers that had been set up around the area.
Motioning behind him, the wall lit up like a screen. It was blank, showing only featureless white, but she was pretty sure that was about to change. "Roughly three days ago, at around 21:00, a yet-unknown parahuman in conflict with members of the Empire Eighty-Eight escalated and set fire to a cache of weaponry and ammunition, resulting in a series of explosions and the destruction of, as far as investigators can be sure, more than two-hundred and thirty thousand US dollars worth of smuggled weaponry."
The back wall changed, the sight of the charred-out husk of a warehouse visible, the surrounding area scorched, littered with cooled slag.
"Two members of the gang were wounded, one more severely than the other." Armsmaster continued, his voice forever level, a constant, almost monotonous calm. The picture didn't change, but Sophia had seen photos of them before they'd extracted those knives. One of them had most of the top row of his teeth kicked in, accompanied by a pretty nasty concussion.
"The other major gangs in the area—the Merchants and the Azn Bad Boys—took advantage of that weakness and set off a series of skirmishes which resulted in six deaths over the last twenty-four hours, and an unknown but estimated ninety-three injured. The Empire retaliated by mass mobilizing and attempting to riot in several regions, which were dispersed by the local police force with help from several PRT squads in the event of cape intervention." The screen changed, videos - muted - playing out, candid angles showing large crowds of protestors and rabble-rousers being forced back by riot shields and tear gas canisters. "This was mostly successful, with only a number injured, but did not actually prevent any new mobilization of Empire gang members or those sympathetic to their cause. Riots have continued to appear, escalating in violence and intensity. As of last night, though this is unreported, a total of two non-white families were targeted and brutalized in their own homes, with a total of four deaths and two heavily wounded."
There was a staggered noise of surprise and horror among just about everyone. Sophia kept quiet, but it was a relatively close thing.
"The National Guard is currently on its way to provide reinforcements. We have additionally been loaned two capes from Boston, who have already arrived, and three more capes, particularly from New York, are ready to be deployed and transported immediately to Brockton if the situation worsens in any quantifiable way. We also have up to ten other capes willing to be deployed from various PRT branches across the country if this escalates into a worst-case scenario. Information on these capes is available in the booklets that you've all been provided with, please take some time to read them over and become familiar with your possible reinforcements." Armsmaster continued, once everyone had finally settled down.
Sophia glanced at the bundle of papers in her hand, listened to the sound of shifting pages. She thumbed it open, flicking through the basic read-out of the situation, finally coming across the two Boston capes. Fax and Shockplug, the former could create fragile - albeit tangible - flaming humanoid figures out of nearby fire sources which scaled up to the size of said source of fire, the latter was an electrokinetic who could charge held anything they touched with electricity proportional to the conductivity of said thing, ranging from 'taser' to 'extremely lethal' depending on the tool. It wasn't a lot, but... Fax seemed to have some potential, at the very least.
"Currently, Thinkers believe things will continue to escalate," Armsmaster interrupted, drawing Sophia's attention away from her search for the possible New York reinforcements and back to him. "It's also generally assumed that they will continue to target families. We are currently facing a crisis, one that has the chance to snowball rapidly out of control, and it is in everyone's best interest to work from the assumption that things will get significantly worse before they get better. We have started setting up blockades and begun outreach to minority communities in regions the Empire generally contests, with some limited successes."
The silence was heavy this time as the screen changed to a map, showing off the rough estimate of gang territory, bright gold lines marking out the communities of minorities. Most weren't in the Empire's territory, she noticed, but there was enough overlap to make her stomach twist, and there were enough communities within a short distance that them branching out in their attacks would be likely. Her only saving grace was that her house was far, far away, but... shit, Taylor lived near some of that, didn't she?
"We are going to be declaring a state of emergency within the hours of 17:00 and 21:00, and even if we do not, schools will be required to shut down until the situation can be handled and it becomes safe to congregate again. While we won't be restricting foot traffic or placing a curfew, it is heavily recommended that you tell others to remain inside or find safe shelters until this situation is handled." Armsmaster shifted, glancing over everyone in the crowd, a long, lingering look. "We request that you all provide us with aid during these times, and take part in joint patrols and operations intended to curtail further influence. It will be decided based on team, but some of these will be sensitive operations, others will not. It would be best if you could continue your normal patrols, but remain aware of your surroundings, things have been extreme, yes, but only in specific circumstances. There is no clear indication when or if things will become more immediately chaotic and risky to engage with."
Taking in a Breath, Armsmaster stared back down at them. "This is a confluence of factors, and what is a 'perfect storm' of a worst-case. We are currently not in a state of emergency, nor are people rioting in the streets. We have only experienced skirmishes and some protests and unlawful gatherings. This is also our public line, what we will be telling the press, with the intent to keep people at home and safe."
The muttering, however low, petered off at that. People seemed to relax a bit, even Missy. Maybe it was because of how Brockton was, but people came into things with the innate assumption that the worst case was the current situation, that things had gone from zero to exceptionally awful.
Miss Militia stepped forward, Armsmaster ceding the microphone to her. "What we've described are possible projections, potential futures if we let things continue as they are, but that's not what we're going to do. We may be facing a possible gang war, a massive shift in power, and we cannot let that continue. Our intended plans, therefore, is to prevent this from escalating any further, to keep things calm, and to break apart riots and arrest who we can."
The screen changed, Sophia tensing as Shrike and about a handful of others she hadn't already seen in the crowd appeared across the screen. "These are among the capes that are likely to respond to this situation poorly or attempt to take advantage of the situation to further their own goals. Our main focus will be on the gangs, yes, but secondary goals are to prevent these people from worsening the situation. Most of these are independent heroes and vigilantes, with only a few villains, as you can see."
When nobody said anything, Miss Militia continued. "Our first and major concern is one of the main suspects for the warehouse fire: Shrike. Shrike is a Tinker, likely you've heard of her, we have her currently classified as a Tinker-slash-Blaster four, pending an increase to six, alongside a Thinker rating of three due to her inhuman accuracy without any sign of technology which would grant her that ability."
More silence.
"Shrike is our main concern among those on the screen. She is extremely violent, prone to mutilating Empire members, and some early Thinker reviews have pushed the idea that she likely has deep-seated grief with the Empire that would be enough to self-justify killing members in cold blood, though she has yet to go that far. Them rallying like this will be too much for her, and she will likely go out with the intent to hurt others. If she did, in fact, set fire to the warehouse, she has possibly escalated further again, and may even kill someone."
Sophia clenched her fists, tried to breathe. Dean was shooting her sympathetic looks, probably took her anxiety - fuck she hated how she could admit that - and anger to be related to white nationalists, not to Shrike. He could be a bit dense like that, and she'd probably been labelled a lesbian in his head anyway. She was basically the amalgam of shit the Empire hated: non-white and not straight, and there was every reason for her to be upset, to be worried that she could be targeted.
"If you see Shrike, you are recommended to attempt to talk her down, and if that doesn't work, you have the ability to issue an arrest. We may contest that arrest if you attacked her without warning, Shrike has not yet reached her third strike, and she is still to be cooperated with at all possible, but it is in everyone's best interest to ensure she doesn't escalate things further or act as a rallying point for Empire members. She already has a reputation among them, and her presence could very easily cause things to spiral out of control."
She had a 'date' with Taylor tomorrow. A stay-in one, on paper, anyway, but a date. A date she was using to cover her going out, a date that Taylor would use as an excuse to go out and hunt people down. She stifled the guilt before it could flare up, unwilling to let Dean see it if she could manage. She... she had to think, had to decide, what she was going to do about that, if she was going to do something about that. If she even could.
"Now that we have Shrike covered, we'll move on to the other capes you should be on the lookout for, before segueing into more concrete plans of action we'll be undertaking for the next twenty-four hours. Before that, however, does anyone have any questions?"
Last edited: May 23, 2020
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OxfordOctopus
May 23, 2020
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Threadmarks A-TRACK 1.6
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OxfordOctopus
OxfordOctopus
(Unverified Jackanape)
She/Her
May 25, 2020
#471
A-TRACK 1.6
song credit: remember - on your memories - (reprises version, armored core ost)
Spoiler: AN CW
Dropping her overnight bag at the foot of the couch, Taylor glanced around the increasingly familiar sight of Sophia's basement. It was a pretty nice place, if barren, with really only the couches, chairs, table, the television, that mini-fridge and the hallway that led to Sophia's room and the other guest bedrooms, one of which would be hers for the night, when she got back.
She could even still hear her mother upstairs, probably trying to alleviate her nerves. This night of all nights was, to be fair, not the greatest to have a date. The only reason she had been allowed over was probably that the Hess household was a fair distance away from the chaos - whereas her actual home was uncomfortably close to some of the recent skirmishes - and the date itself had become more of a sleepover when it became clear a few hours ago that driving around past six or seven o'clock was just not in the books unless they wanted to risk getting caught in the middle of a fight.
The television was on the news, not muted, but low enough that she could only pick up a few words out the lot. The image on it was a scene from a few hours ago, a clip of the National Guard standing in a line, shields bared, as people in black and red brandished weapons - guns, bats, anything they could get their hands on - and chucked debris at the windows of an apartment. Behind the line of shields, armoured PRT officers aimed wide-barreled weapons over the line, fired, canisters twirling through the air and hitting the ground with an explosion of foam and churning grey smoke, driving the crowd of people further back.
Turning her focus away from it, Taylor met Sophia's eyes. There was something complicated in the back of them, tense, but it didn't linger on her face long enough to put a word to it. It would make sense if she was upset, white nationalists were literally rioting in the streets at this point and for all that they were safe they could very quickly not be, if things got out of hand.
Walking around the arm of the couch, Taylor dropped herself down into the plush fabric. At the other end, Gumbo gave her a lidded, lazy look, snuffling once before burying his snout back between his paws, eyes shutting.
"It's really gone to shit out there, huh," Taylor said, eyes flicking back to the screen as it transitioned to the image of a pretty blonde newscaster.
Sophia made a noise, low and tired. "It has," she said, finally, turning her attention away from Taylor and to the television as well. She plucked the remote from the side table to her right, maneuvering herself so that she was almost cradled in the arms of the chair, legs thrown over one arm while her back pressed against the other. She turned the volume up, the woman's voice rising into coherency.
"—we are at the end of a long day of conflict, Cathy. While Joseph will be on in just a moment to give us a closer look at the street level, we are to remind people to stay indoors, and that there has been a state of emergency called. If you believe you are at risk for targeted gang violence, the phone number on the screen will get you help suited to your situation as soon as possible. Please be safe. Now, onto you Joseph."
At least they were trying. That was more than could be said for a lot of things, lately.
The screen changed again to a street-level shot. It was darker out, street lights on, and in the far distance the dull embers of something burning were just barely visible over the police barricade that had been put up. A white man in his mid-forties with a head full of curly black hair smiled politely at the camera, though it looked a little wan. "Thank you, Lauren. As you can see behind me, I am at the intersection between Clifford Street and Oxton Road in Pleasant Acre. Not too far behind me, violent conflicts between two of the largest gangs in our city are taking place: the Empire Eighty-Eight, and The Archer Bridge Merchants. Currently, while there has been no report of gunfire, there have been reports of arson and some physical altercations."
"Isn't it a bit stupid to have him so close?" Sophia asked, Taylor's eyes tracking to her, watching as she tilted her head, almost like a dog, a cute scrunch to her nose.
Taylor found herself shrugging, some of the tension she hadn't known was there bleeding out of her. "I think it says something more that we're so desensitized to violence that he's over there telling us the details about how the gangs are beating each other to death with metal objects and he's not looking really bothered by it."
Sophia grunted. "That's true," she admitted.
Closing her eyes, Taylor blocked out the sound of the television for a moment, listening. She could just barely hear the rumble of her mother's car, a dull chortle of noise as wheels pulled against concrete, growing distant. Something unpleasant in her heart clenched, a certain energy, tension, writhing away in her chest. She opened her eyes, met Sophia's, who was looking at her with that expression again.
"I need to," Taylor said without thinking, rising slowly to her feet. Gumbo wuffled, a curious noise, rising up from his bundle of furs and pudge and padding oh-so-gently along the distance of the couch, his head bumping into her hip. She paused for a moment, and with little prompting the labrador did it again, a gentle push. Reaching down with fingers far too tense, Taylor brushed them through his fur, scritched gently, the dog responding with continued pressure against her hip, not enough to shove or push, just enough to let her know he was there.
"He was trained for that, you know?" Sophia said, her voice so much closer. Taylor glanced around maybe a little too sharply, a little too quick, giving away her nervousness, the tension. She was standing now, maybe a few steps away from her, one leg of her baggy sweatpants rucked up near her knee. "I got him when I was younger, he's a..." Sophia hesitated, paused, before swallowing and locking her shoulders. "A—a service dog, for PTSD."
Oh. Oh.
Taylor kept running her fingers through Gumbo's fur, felt the soft texture, the gentle heat that radiated out from him. He was soft, anchoring, knew how to bring people down from ledges, but then she hadn't ever really been on that ledge, had she? Not since that night; she'd long since stepped off of it. She was falling now, just slow enough that people hadn't quite noticed yet.
It was too late for her. But this helped, this trust, it did something for her, warmed her chest. She wanted to sink her fingers into Sophia's hair, press herself into her body, soak in her presence, her safety, that trust. A trust that was conditional, that was even a bit toxic, Sophia was keeping a secret that weighed more than knowing she suffered from trauma, a secret that could get her in trouble, making her a target if it got out. It wasn't balanced, it was even unfair.
"I'm sorry," Taylor said, for lack of anything better.
Sophia just looked at her, eyes sad.
Releasing Gumbo, she stepped away, not quite able to look at the dog, the temptation to just soak in his presence. She had to go out, every inch of her skin itched with the need, her bones screamed in fleshy prisons to creak and ache, her mind conjured endless images of violence, of conflict. She couldn't stay, this was what she had to do, she had brought her costume, her weapons, all packed away in that duffle bag. The urge was too big, she was too far gone.
Shaking herself free, Taylor walked back around the couch, leaning down to grab hold of her duffel bag. She tried not to think about how white her knuckles were, how every action she made was cramped, tight, a desperate clench.
Fingers tangled into the back of her sweater, pulled.
"Don't go," Sophia pleaded, and though she couldn't see her, the worry in her voice shone so clear, so harsh. Complete and total emotional honesty, the first time she'd ever heard it in Sophia's voice outside of a few moments of anger and the words she told Emma when she found out about their 'relationship'. "Please."
Taylor swallowed. There was something achingly familiar about this, about someone trying to keep her in one place, to stop her from doing what she needed to do, but it was a hollow comparison. Just like how Sophia could be aggressive but not like Brent, this was similarly different. Sophia was worried for her, for her health and her safety and the number of other things, she was not trying to possess her or cage her or keep her down.
Sophia and her warmth, and her worry, and her little secrets, gifted out in pieces, each one relished. Sophia and the smell of oils, worn leather, the way she radiated heat on her touches, how every little sign of affection or care was something you didn't have to necessarily work for but were only given in small parts. Nothing about her was easy, or gentle, or particularly soft, she could be mean, she could be violent, but she was Sophia.
And Taylor liked her.
Ah. Shit. She did, didn't she? That was... bad. Liked her more than she should, liked her in a way she didn't want to like people anymore, in that way that made her face crawl with heat and her chest clench like a stranglehold. She liked her, associated things with her, liked her warmth and her trust and the shared secrets, liked her in a way that made her want to bury her nose in the crook of her neck, get lost in her presence, anchor herself on her.
Taylor flinched away like she was burned, the fingers pulled free from her sweater. She stumbled a few steps, bag dragged with her, the heat on her face bright, harsh, crawling from cheek to ear to neck and down her collarbone, to her chest. She breathed in, shut her eyes, pushed it down harshly, kicked and batted at the sensation until she was certain that she was centred, that none of it showed, that none of that inner turmoil - fear fear fear - was visible on her face.
She turned, met Sophia's eyes, saw Gumbo looking between the two of them, almost like he was worried.
"I'm sorry," she said, again. She was, too. She was sorry that she was who she was, that she formed attachments so easy, ones so ready to hurt her, that she was unreasonably violent, that she did what she did.
But being sorry still didn't stop her from leaving.
[6 of 7]
Now Playing...
The streets were a mess, pockets of conflict meeting other pockets. She could just distantly hear gunfire off in the distance, a dull rat-a-tat that cracked, bounced between buildings. Streetlights illuminated what they could, pockets of vision along stretches of darkness between cramped buildings, and where they failed fire took their place. Some buildings burned, others had burning trash cans, and even a few were abandoned torches, left on the street side.
It was chaos, it was bordering on anarchy.
It made hunting a target far, far easier.
There was something in her this time, a fit of anger, a predatory rage. Each step was calculated, each movement guarded, she already had a spear in hand as she jumped between the short gaps in buildings, not caring if the people below heard her. Stealth was useful when it was but when the world burned to be subtle only meant so much. Capes were out, she could see the distant flicker of laser fire some distance away, cracking into the sky, a mix of reds, purples and blues, but they were distant, the heroes in general were. She preferred it that way.
Below her, on the street, four little men who thought themselves bigger than anyone who didn't share their skin colour laughed. It was a booming thing, giddy and unrepentant, chortles as they shared their conquests, their jokes, their superiority. None of them looked important, but then they didn't have to be; tonight was when the whistles went away, when things became real, when the masks came off and they said what they meant to say instead of just implying it.
She perched on the edge of the roof, stared down at them like a gargoyle, like a monster. To them, she probably was; she was the Shrike, the reason why any of this was happening. Sure, they were taking advantage of the chaos to really let out their own inner monsters, but did that really matter? Monsters would be monsters, regardless of how they dressed themselves up for it.
Taylor knew that best of all.
"So the dumb bitch, right, she's like, 'shut up you pig'," the blonde of the group said, his voice a lurid, smarmy thing. "So I cop a feel, just to double-check what Nicholas over there"—he motioned at the bald one, his head adorned with a chain that linked together a series of celtic crosses—"said about her ass, and she squeals."
There was a bout of laughter.
"Like a piggy," Nicholas reaffirmed, voice smug. "A piglet who I pay for sex, sure, but a pig."
Her javelin extended out to its full length, her fingers tense and white-knuckle. Her vision narrowed down to Nicholas, his leg angled just right, the javelin just long enough—
"She got all uppity about it, you know?" Blondie complained, huffing like a toddler.
She tensed her arm, felt the servos hiss, adjusting, enhancing her strength.
Nicholas shrugged. "I paid her for one person, not three."
She threw, the javelin exploding on the ass end, an eruption of noise and flame, a smear of black metal that left her fingers and tore through Nicholas' calf in a blink, then into the concrete, sending him toppling back, sheathing itself deep into the earth. Taylor reached behind her as she pushed forward, slipping one knife into her hand as she dropped the distance from the roof, the servos around her legs locking, readying, before she hit the blonde right on his back, the servos screaming as they redistributed the force that would've gone to her right into him. Something in the blonde's hips shattered, a scream escaping his lips as he was forced to the ground, one thigh popped unpleasantly out of place.
She whipped one arm out, knife leaving her fingers and slamming into the foot of a brown-haired, freckled guy in his early twenties, locking him in place.
"Shrike!" The last of the four - black-hair, green eyes, vaguely familiar - screamed, loud and terrified, scrambling backwards, trying to run. Her fingers found her other knife, and she jumped from the broken, misaligned hips of the blonde - to the sound of his relishing screams - and threw it at an angle, getting him right through the back of his ankle, his foot, and into the concrete, jerking him to a stop, a painful wail leaping from his lips.
Standing up at her full height, Taylor didn't even bother to survey her work. He had been too loud, if someone had heard her cape name, well, she was about to be swarmed, and even she knew better than to do that. The alley between the building she had dropped off and the one next to it was cramped, dark, filthy and slick, but it also had one of those metal staircases built into the brownstone of the building, not that it looked all that safe or maintained.
Turning towards it, hot burning pain exploded across her left side, the press of something metal and cold contrasting the ache of pain and it hurt hurt hurt. She jerked away, out from the gloom of the alley a man with a knife, looking bewildering between it and her, stood. There had been five, why hadn't she noticed the fifth, he had been right there—
"I hurt the Shrike," the guy murmured, brown hair and black eyes staring at the knife. He glanced back up at her, something like pride and eagerness blooming across his face. He flicked the knife around, lunged at her, knife brandished in a reverse hold. Taylor scrambled back, terror in her throat, a scream on her lips as she pulled at the first thing she could get her hands around in her belt, adrenaline howling in her ears as she threw whatever it was in a sloppy arc, the dart slamming home into his stomach and then hissing with an electric pulse before the man spasmed wildly, dropping the knife and crumpling to his knees, clutching at the dart.
Rage filled the gaps where terror had been, the pain arcing, spasming, not familiar - knife wounds burned, they felt raised, irritated, and the blood was soaking into the fabric of her suit - but the situation itself was. She lunged, slamming her fist into his face, once, twice, grabbing a fistful of his hair and hauling his head to the side, cracking it against the surface of the brownstone, again and again, and again until she had to drop him to clutch at the pulsing pain in her side, the man groaning and rolling over now that she wasn't grappling with him.
She breathed in harshly, the rattle in her chest weak and fluttering. Her heart pounded in her ears, in the weeping wound. She could feel where the flesh parted with her fingers, the part of her body where it pulled away, the blood that drooled down her side, matted her fingers. She wobbled, toppling, grasping at the wall, her bloodied hand coming up to yank the scarf free from her face, the cold biting against her lips, her chin, now that they weren't covered. Shakily, she wrapped it around her midsection, tying it off once tight enough to make the ache of the wound escalate into a burning agony. Her legs threatened to give out on her, it hurt, she hated hurting, it brought her back, that weakness, that pain. She couldn't, she couldn't, not again, no, no no no no.
"Over here!"
Voices, loud. She had to run, she scrambled forward, ignoring the pain, rushing as fast as she could through the delirium of the wound, the adrenaline in her skull. Nobody could see her, she needed to hide, she needed to get away. Where? Where? Home was too far, too risky, still in the radius where she could be found, where conflict was. Who? Sophia, right, she was supposed to be there, sleeping over. Don't go, she shouldn't've.
She knew the way, and it got clearer as the haze of pain and panic pulled from her eyes. She kept running, ignoring the pain in her side, in her lungs, and slipped back into the maze of streets and alleyways.
B-SIDE
Sophia unlocked the basement door, pushed it open carefully. She had a bat just beside the door, just in case that text wasn't from Taylor, she was back too early, something had either gone wrong or she had been caught and someone had gotten into her phone. Peeking through the crack, she breathed a heady sigh of relief when she saw Taylor, scarf around her midsection, looking... was that blood?
Sophia pushed the door open - stupid stupid stupid there could be more people using her as a hostage - fully, rushing out into the chill, finding nobody else. Taylor toppled to the side, and Sophia had to reach out to catch her, her hand pressing against the wet, copper-soaked makeshift bandage. The blood was sticky, gummy, almost cold. At a closer look, Taylor was no better, too pale to be anything good.
"In." Sophia barked out, and wordlessly Taylor followed, stumbling up the few steps and into the basement door, which Sophia shut and locked behind them. Dragging her wordlessly, Sophia made for the hallway, stopping only to grab the first aid kit off of the wall near the television - PRT-issued, meant for exceptional emergencies, given to every hero, Ward or Protectorate - before dragging her towards her room, shoving the door open without a care.
"Sit on the bed, tell me what happened," Sophia commanded, rushing to the other end, pulling at one of her dresser drawers, pushing aside shitty underwear to get at the hidden manuals beneath them. She had to be in work mode right now, if she let the panic or worry pull her under Taylor would bleed the fuck out in her house and she had to be sure that didn't happen.
"Slashed," Taylor slurred, sounding barely there. "St'pid 'stake."
Shit, shit. How much blood had she lost? Sophia turned back to her, thumbing to the page about cut wounds, how to stitch them, shit like that. She walked over, dropped the kit beside Taylor, and reached over to tear the hole where the wound had been larger, Taylor making a wordless noise of complaint but not stopping her. Withholding a hiss, she looked over the wound, it wasn't horrible, but... it was wide enough that it'd need stitches. Shit.
Popping the kit open, Sophia pulled out one of the plastic-sealed needles and the length of medical stitching. She flipped to the appropriate page, scanning it, how to stitch a wound together was basic first aid but her memories needed to be jogged, panic was doing her focus no favours and Taylor bleeding into her bedspread was no better. She'd have to claim her period came early or something, bullshit that she synced up or something, whatever. It didn't matter, not right now, she just had to do this, had to fix this.
Loosening the cap on the disinfectant, Sophia looked up at Taylor, who looked back at her but didn't really seem to be focusing. "Sor'y," the other girl slurred thoughtlessly, head bobbing back.
"Bite on your glove, Taylor," Sophia said as firmly as she could. Taylor, hazy-eyed and barely focusing, did as she asked. Sophia dabbed some of the bottle onto the accompanying pad of cloth it came with, readying herself to flinch away from a retaliatory swing. She didn't look coherent enough to realize what was happening.
She pretended not to hear the warbling, pained noise Taylor made as she began to apply the hydrogen peroxide.
Taylor's head shifted a little in her lap, hair pooling around her thighs. She had gotten her out of her costume - black bodysuit, black jacket with white fur, black leather gloves with white-painted metal servos, white domino mask that nearly covered the tip of her nose, and a black scarf - and into some of the clothing that was left in the overnight bag that she'd left near the door when she left. Her projectiles were packed away as well, hidden beneath the clothes she'd worn on the way over, looking perfectly inconspicuous. Everything was safe, hidden.
Sophia stared at her hands, flexed her fingers. They were perfectly clear, no sign of blood, yet she could still feel it, still feel the gummy wetness between the fingers, sticky and metal. She brought her fingers together, apart, felt surprised when there was no resistance, when there was no wetness, no clotting. She swallowed, throat dry, panic in her chest, the adrenaline gone, replaced with a deep-rooted sense of unease.
She still felt what it was like to push the needle through, the soft, bleary noises of pain that had escaped Taylor's lips, the shaky, bloodstained fingerprints she'd left on her manual. She might have to burn it.
Taylor murmured in her sleep, face pressing in further against her thigh. Sophia watched her for a moment, watched her breathe, watched as she twitched and shifted and nestled ever-closer into her, one arm wrapped around her midsection. She looked relaxed, soft, when asleep, so different from that wan, worn-out thing that had stumbled into the house, bleeding from her side, looking like the world had been torn out from her, almost feral.
Would she go back out after this? It wasn't a close call, the cut hadn't been shallow but it also hadn't been lethal and Taylor had likely walked quite the distance with it. Would she wake up tomorrow to find her gone?
Why did it matter that the thought of that made her terrified? Made panic swirl in her chest?
Choking back a noise, Sophia stared up at her ceiling, reached down to gently run her fingers through Taylor's sweat-damp hair. She got a low noise in response, a gentle contented hum.
She cared about Taylor enough to be worried, to be fearful that she'd go off and die, go off and bleed out in some corner. What if she hadn't found out about her? Would she be consoling Emma tomorrow about her dead best friend? Would she hear about how Shrike bled out somewhere? What did she change, by inserting herself like this, by making herself vulnerable?
Sophia wasn't sure, and she wasn't sure if she wanted to know what the alternative could've been.
Last edited: May 27, 2020
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OxfordOctopus
May 25, 2020
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