Alright, I finally am getting off my butt and posting my story on here, but updates will be sporadic. It's all just copy-pasted from the fanfic website.
This is a Power Swap Fic! (Or a Shard swap fic. however you want to word it.)
Taylor got Oni Lee's Power (with slight modifications due to how it meshed with her), and Oni Lee got hers. (Again with slight modifications.)
What will happen to the world with a Taylor who travels a different path? How will the end of the world be prevented now? AU, no romances planned. NaNoWriMo project, so now that it is no longer November, the updates will be less often. (Although I found myself writing huge ass chapters lately over the holidays, so who knows?)
Chapters start out short as I got into the swing of things, and they do get longer. And I know I keep describing Taylor's various attempts at costumes, but I'm trying to help you guys picture it in your heads, and she lacks the cool ability to make spider silk armor herself. She's gonna go through various iterations until she gets a final costume down, and then I'll see if I can't find a good image online to help you all imagine it.
Oh and I kept the whole 'Never really got to pick her cape name' thing, cus why not. :p
Stamp 1-1
January 3rd, 2011. My second year of high-school. This is the day that I almost died.
I survived. I saved myself. I got superpowers.
It was horrible.
I suppose I should explain. You see, there are these three girls at school that have been making my life pretty goddamn miserable. Doing everything they could think of to make school suck, humiliate me, hurt me. Each of the three had their individual approach, and for a good while, it was like they were trying to outdo each other in how creative or mean they could get.
It started when my former best friend Emma turned on me, just in time for the start of high-school. It went on for almost a year and a half before things quieted down. Around November, it was like they got bored. The pranks got tamer, then stopped altogether. The taunts stopped, and so did most of the hate mail. They ignored me, left me alone.
I kept waiting for the other shoe to drop. But I made a friend, one of the girls who had sometimes joined in on the taunting came to me and apologized. Not one of the major bullies, more like a friend of a friend of the bullies, I guess. She asked me if I wanted to hang out. I was too gun-shy, told her no, but it got so we were talking before and after classes and eating lunch together. Her approaching me and befriending me was one of the big reasons I could think the harassment was ending. I never really let my guard down around her, but she was pretty cool about it.
And for most of November and the two weeks of classes before Christmas break, nothing. They were leaving me alone. I was able to relax. I thought it was over, that I could live my life now. Be happy.
That ended the day I came back from the winter break. I went to my locker, and well, they'd obviously raided the bins from the girls bathrooms or something, because they'd piled used pads and tampons into my locker. Almost filled it.
It was pretty obvious that they had done it before the school closed for Christmas, by the smell alone. I bent over to throw up, right there in a crowded hallway, everyone watching. Before I could recover or stop losing my breakfast, on of them grabbed me by the hair, hard enough it hurt, and shoved me into the locker.
They shut the locker and put the lock on it. I was trapped in there, with this rancid smell and puke, barely able to move, it was so full. All I could think was that someone had been willing to get their hands that dirty to fuck with me, but of all the students that had seen me get shoved in the locker, nobody was getting a janitor or teacher to let me out. I panicked, freaked out. The school day started and I was still in there.
Hours passed. During the class break I could hear laughter, sniggers and gagging sounds as people passed by. No-one let me out. I was feeling sick, dizzy, my voice hoarse from all the screaming and pleading. For hours I had banged against the door, trying to raise enough noise to be noticed. Insects were crawling on me, biting me, infesting me. Vomit and blood and filth seeping into the wounds. So as they all went to class, leaving me abandoned a second time, I broke. Something changed, I experienced something. I forgot it immediately after, but it was profoundly life changing.
I could see a tiny sliver of the ground outside my locker. I had watched as shadowy forms walked by earlier. My locker was far enough from any classrooms that no teacher had been disturbed enough by my shouting and screaming, they had not come to rescue me. I wanted out, and I knew by this point that no-one was going to let me out.
All of a sudden, I was out. But I was also still trapped inside. Everything was clear, bright and detailed, surreal. I could clearly see every colour in the faded tiles of the hallway, the nearby stairwell, the faded posters on the walls, and rows of lockers leading to a far away classroom. I was still light headed, dizzy, and shaking.
The filth was still on me, on both selves. And I knew one terrible truth. I was still in that locker. I might be out, but I was not free yet. Desperate, confused, sick, I took a step over and fumbled at the lock. I was lucky, they had simply replaced my own lock and had not used a new one. I knew the combination. Trembling hands slowly spun the dial. Click. Open.
I swung the door open and looked at myself. An odd moment of balance, peace, of riding a cresting wave. Only a few seconds had passed since I had found myself both free yet trapped. But now I could feel that wave starting to break. To fall apart. I had a moment of decision, of who to be. Me, or me? It didn't matter, I was free. I saw my rescuer crumble to ash. Me.
The rush of being two selves collapsed. I passed out.
This is where my story starts.
Last edited: Oct 28, 2016
168
Stillwind11
Dec 30, 2015
View discussion
Threadmarks Stamp 1-2
View content
Stillwind11
Stillwind11
Dec 30, 2015
#2
Stamp 1-2
It feels like I'm a different person now, ever since the locker. I'm more wary, less trusting. I'd like to think I'm more pragmatic now. All thanks to my lovely school, Winslow High, and the selfish people in charge who don't seem to care about anything but their reputations.
I don't remember anything about the trip to the hospital. Heck, I don't even know who found me and called for an ambulance in the first place. I only remember waking up some time later, my dad holding my hand.
He was crying and it was kinda embarrassing, but then I started to cry too, I felt so much relief. I was alive and my dad was there waiting for me. He looked so tired and frail, I wish I could have hid the bullying from him for longer, I didn't want him to worry about me. I hate that all the walls had come crumbling down around me, exposing me.
I ended up being in the hospital for a whole week, recovering from the attack. They tell me I would have died if I had stayed there much longer. I had a nasty infection from all that filth getting into my blood through the bug bites.
Once I'm discharged to go home, I'll have to take a lot of antibiotics for a whole month, and I'll have to resist the urge to scratch at my bandages as my skin heals. It's already hard to resist the urge, and the nightmares of insects crawling under my skin don't help either.
Dad of course had gone ballistic when I reluctantly told him what happened. I stupidly thought that this would be the final straw that forced the school do something, but it turns out that the principal was very determined to support her favorite three bullies. Apparently there were no 'concrete' witnesses, no 'evidence' of who had done this crime, and so on.
Dad wanted to pursue it in court anyways but I knew that Emma's dad, the high powered lawyer Alan Barnes, would quickly jump in once it was clear who one of the three 'suspects' were. We'd never win.
I finally told him to just take the schools deal to pay for the medical bills. I almost regretted it right away, almost took it back. He looked so defeated. After making sure that it was what I wanted to do, he nodded sadly. I think he knew deep down that we couldn't afford to get justice, that he could do nothing to help me. I'm sorry dad, we need the money too much. I don't want you selling our house, mom's house, just to get revenge.
I have powers now, I remember that part clearly. And that changes everything. Once I get home, I'll have to start planning and testing things.
Just like I saved myself from the locker, I'm going to save the both of us. Heck, I'm going to save the whole city if I can. I'm going to be a superhero one day.
~~~~~~~~~~~
Dad tries to be home more in the days that follow, but he still has to work since the bills never stop coming. The hospital expenses were only barely covered. The settlement we got from the school didn't actually help much, it only kept us from debt. But at least that leaves me with plenty of free time to practice with my new powers. I have a whole two weeks off school, doctor's orders, to recover, rest, and (secretly) train.
I start with the basics on day one. It's not like I had much else to do, and I was sick of spending all day in bed. I had slept enough in the hospital.
First off, what were my powers? It seemed like I had made another me. A clone? But I remember being both selves. So probably not a disposable minion that I've heard some capes could make.
So I tried to conjure up the same feeling I had in the locker, the same, odd balancing sensation. I try to remember what it was like to see the world through four sets of eyes, to stare at myself doubly, almost like a mirror but subtly different.
It all clicked into place quite suddenly, like falling on a hidden patch of ice. I suddenly was in two places at once, seeing two things, thinking with two minds. Everything got more detailed, I became more aware of things. I marvel at how this second me felt like just another limb to control, intuitive and a part of me, but standing in a different part of my kitchen and looking back at me.
Looking around, I notice that I can actually see most of the room if I turned my heads in opposite directions. 360 degree vision, wow. That is pretty cool.
After a few seconds, I feel that duality collapse. I was only one, not two. This was incredibly disappointing at first. I could only create a clone/self/minion for a few seconds? What good would that ever do? But I quickly stifled my disappointment. Patience, I counsel myself as I rub my bandaged arms, shivering with some strange combination of fear and excitement.
Until I had finished all the tests I had planned, and more that I had not yet thought of, there was no way to know if my power was a good one or not. Not everything would be obvious on the first try.
For instance, my senses seemed amplified when I was two selves. When I had been in the hospital trying to figure out what had happened, I had thought that it was merely a side effect of the stress and infection, a hallucination. But now I see that it clearly was a part of my power.
It makes sense, I now had double the eyes, ears, and so on. My mind seemed able to handle the expanded vision with no problem, plus I seem to think more clearly, remember details better.
Now to test the odd choice I seem to have at the end, of which 'me' to collapse into.
Another self is made and this time I try to end up as the one standing on the other side of the kitchen table. It ends, and I'm there, just as normal as can be. Only I never moved through the space between.
I suddenly realize that I have a faint smile on my face. Probably the first real one I've had all week.
So it's a temporary doubling of myself, but it's also some kind of teleportation effect when I wanted it to be. That is actually pretty cool, and would be very useful for getting around as a hero, depending on how far I could send out a self.
Can I end the doubled selves early, or did I have to wait the full duration? It seemed I could. My ashy selves only lasted at most five seconds according to my timer, but I could end a self at any instant. I could even move myself anywhere in sight and collapse the self staying behind at nearly the same instant, making it seem as if I teleported, only leaving behind a bit of ash.
Ash that seems to disappear after a few minutes I realize, as I notice my ash stained fingers become clean a while after I had investigated my ashy remains. Curious...
"Now, I seem to be able to make one duplicate of myself, but can I make more?" I ask a copy of myself aloud, tilting my other head in curiosity.
I figure it can't hurt to try. After quite a bit of experimental mental gymnastics, and a brief break to take a few pills when it hit noon, it seemed I could indeed. The trick was difficult to get at first, I had to ride three 'waves' at once. But after a half-hour of practice, it became pretty easy. Almost second nature.
It was kinda disappointing that my duplicates were so fleeting, so temporary. I could only experience this odd, wonderful expansion of my senses for a few seconds at a time. I finally went up to four selves after another fifteen minutes of experimentation, it was much easier to get the hang of it now that I knew what I was doing.
Or possibly I was smarter when I literally had more heads? It would make sense. I had a hard time just making three selves all at once from a 'cold start' of just being my single, lone self. But I found that if I had one or two already made, then it became much easier to reach my maximum.
Well, this power is starting to look better and better now. Four selves to fight with is much better than two.
I strike a pose with all four selves, raising my 8 fists and a few feet up in various silly kung-fu poses. One self starts to lose balance, but I reach out to stabilize myself, then giggle at how silly I must look as small puffs of ash float to the floor around me from my dissolving selves. Four seemed to be my maximum for now, after trying intermittently for another hour.
I feel like if I could just learn to 'balance' better, I might be able to get more. Alas, the right state of mind eludes me. I'll have to work on that.
"Note to self, learn meditation?"
You know, it's probably a bad habit to be talking to myself all the time, but at least with my duplicate selves it will look slightly less insane now.
Hmm... ok time for another basic experiment. How long can I keep making more selves? Is it infinite, or do I get tired? No-one knows where powers come from, or how they work. For all I know I can only use my power when the moon is full, or some crap like that. Well, that's probably only werewolves, but still. Who knows what rules govern these things?
So I sit down on the couch and turn the TV on to have something to listen to. This could take all day, or I might not ever get tired. Might as well not be bored while I'm testing. To see if there is a limit to how long I can keep making them, I keep up a rotation of selves. Every one and a half seconds (or so), a self would turn to ash, and I'd make a new one as immediately as I could.
There is always a small delay, but the gap between one going and one appearing does get a bit smaller with practice. That's good news, skill does matter somewhat. This means I can work to eliminate the gap.
Maybe one day I'll be able to make the new self appear seamlessly in the same spot as the old, at the exact moment that the previous one disappears. That would let me be two people at once, but one would probably look like they are constantly shedding ashes like some kind of horrible superhero dandruff.
I get bored of the news on TV after a bit, but flipping through channels reveals there is nothing else to watch that's not a rerun or horrible. Daytime television sucks, probably to punish kids who aren't in school.
I eventually give up and start to plan my future power tests. What items I might need to test some ideas, ideas that are too dangerous to test right now, or that I'll need help for. How much of my powers I should hide from others? How to hide this from dad?
After half an hour I finally stop, exhausted and ready for a late lunch. Looks like a fairly strong limit on how long I could do this for. It's not like physical fatigue, more of a mental one. Kinda an odd feeling, this mental fog. By the end of the test, the balancing act in my mind stopped being easy to do. I had to focus on each new self, and it took much longer to make each one.
I hungrily eat some leftover Chinese food. My body demands sustenance, and after the bland hospital food, I'm eager to obey. I also start to write down all my new plans, in case I forget them now that I'm only one self instead of four. One brain can probably only hold so much information.
I'll do more tests tomorrow to see if only having three selves up constantly is less tiring. Having four up for around thirty minutes is my current limit, which is not that great. I'm sure I won't be able to do more useful power testing today, not until I recover.
I wonder if there is a way to recharge my energy? If I had electricity powers, I'd try licking a battery, but how would I charge up teleportation/body duplication? I suppose if I ever notice a sudden increase in energy, I'll try to figure out what happened to cause that. Nothing else I could do until I figured out the rules behind my power.
So, how to think of myself, as a teleporter or a duplicator?
I check my augmented self's notes and decide that having people underestimate me at first might be best. Better to have the public think I'm only a teleporter, and only use my other selves in an emergency. They don't last that long yet anyways.
While I haven't heard about many teleporting villains, I know that lots of people who can make minions tend to go evil for some reason. Like that guy Spree who pretty much litters places with his mindless clones when he is causing trouble. At least my power cleaned up after itself when I was done.
I'm pretty sure that I had not gotten any increases in strength, speed, or durability. I still felt weak from the hospital, so no healing factor either. Sure my reflexes and awareness seemed to get better when I was duplicated, but that won't help me much. It would still be me fighting criminals. Skinny, rail thin, gloomy, geeky Taylor. Even if there was now four of me? That didn't change the fact that I was still just a teenage girl.
I make another self to talk to, "Another note to self, or selves? Learn to fight. Martial arts and weapons for sure would be useful combined with teleportation."
At least I'm making good progress. One day in and I'm already starting to map out the edges of my power's limits. I figure that once I hit all the edges, I could start to figure out neat tricks within the limits. My powers are not that great, but it just means I'll have to work harder and be creative.
Step one of my new plan would thus be to go out for a walk after my dad gets home. I might be able to teleport places now, but I have to build up my fitness somehow with no weights or gym membership. I'll have to improvise. Walking, jogging, then running once I'm not as weak as a kitten, that ought to help.
I lounge around the rest of the day, reading my textbooks and studying. My augmented selves had remembered that homeschooling was a thing, and I might want to look into that later. While my current grades were crap, I used to be quite smart.
I can't help a full body shudder as I think of Winslow High. I don't want to go back. I know that Emma and her flunkies have not gotten punished, they will keep on going, worse than ever now that they know they can get away with this kind of thing.
I don't have to go back to school to get an education. I shouldn't have to! My original plan of going to school, keeping my head down, and waiting the bullying out? That had almost killed me!
I could learn at home from now on, which would give me more time for being a superhero too. Then I'll go to University, get a job, and live a wonderful life that involved never having to interact with the 'terror trio' ever again. Maybe it was running away from the problem, but what else could I do? Teleport in and punch them? Sophia was a star athlete and could probably beat up five or six copies of me. I only had four.
My alarm suddenly goes off, cutting short my moping and anger. That means my dad will be home soon, so I start up a fast but tasty lasagna and stuck it in the oven just before I figure he'll get home.
He comes home a bit late, but with an armful of groceries. Restocking the fridge time I suppose. He probably had been surviving on take-out food the last week or so, given how there isn't much fresh food left in the house. I greet him with a real smile on my face. "Hi Dad! Let me help with those."
Today had gone pretty well, and I want to make sure he knows that leaving me home alone all day is a good thing. I grab a bag and look back up at him. I think it must have been a while since I last smiled for real, because he looks kinda funny for a moment before grinning back at me and asking, "So, how was your day?"
"Great! I did some studying, I read a bit, and I made us a lasagna with random mostly canned ingredients. Now that you're home, I think I'm gonna go out for a walk."
"A walk? So soon?"
"Yeah, the doctors told me that the sooner I did physical stuff, the faster I'd recover. I only waited till you got home so you wouldn't get home early, find me gone, and freak out." I tease him gently.
"Well, I'm just worried is all. You won't go far?" He replies more somberly. Tentatively trying to convey that he won't stop me, he just wants me to be safe. I'm touched of course, but have to make sure to nip any thoughts of accompanying me in the bud.
"Course not! Actually I was thinking that once I get better, I want to take up running when the weather is nicer. I'm gonna scout out a few nice paths nearby and plan a workout thing. Get some fresh air and just enjoy the chill of winter. I'm gonna be back just in time to eat. So you go ahead and shower, de-stress from work, and take the food out when the oven beeps?" I silently hope he gets the hint that I need more space, more time.
It seems to work as he nods, puts down the rest of his bags, and starts to take his shoes off. "Ok, if you end up being serious about this running thing, I'm not gonna stop you. I get it. After... You want to be stronger. It's a good goal. Just... Be safe and don't push yourself too hard."
I want to roll my eyes at his dancing around the subject, but he does have a valid reason to worry about me, as annoying as it is. The neighborhood around here is not the best after all. Plus it's not like I've told him that I can just teleport out of danger. To him, I'm his little girl, one who got badly hurt. So instead I nod, grin, pull on my coat and shoes, and walk out into the snow.
As I plan my future running paths, seeing which places have less snow and are better maintained, I come to a small park at the top of a hill. It's not the highest point of the city, just a slightly higher spot that has a good view of the bay. I can see the shipping containers lying like scattered toys, grey choppy water beating up against them. I wonder if I can teleport to anywhere I can see, or if there is a range limit. I impulsively decide that now is a good time to try.
No one walking nearby will even notice a thing as long as I don't ash the self that is standing here. Plus I'm bundled up from the cold, so if anyone does see me appear out there, they won't see much. Not enough to identify me.
I focus and reach out to a blue shipping container on the water. It's a bit obscured by distance and sea spray, but I can make out the broad details as I picked one that isn't too far from shore.
Suddenly I'm there.
I'm still standing safely in the park, but I'm also on a slippery, wet, and tilted metal container. It's coated in lots of ugly rust, metal ridges, and rivets. I see now that what appeared to be darker patches in it are actually holes eaten away by salt, rust, and time. It was hard to tell from the hill just how bad it was out here, and I can't stop from sliding towards the edge as the slightly tilted, ice coated surface refuses to give my feet any purchase. It's all I can do to stay standing, then time runs out and I'm suddenly in one place again.
My heart is pounding harder from the sudden thrill of it all, the secret glee that no one noticed, no one knows that I just did that. I've also learned that I can teleport out pretty far away. Next time I think I'll see if there is a limit, then see if binoculars will extend my range past that.
I briefly wonder if a very familiar location might also work, but no amount of visualization of my bedroom does anything. Looks like imagination and memory is not enough.
I sigh as I keep on walking. I figured it would be like that. From what I've read, most teleportation capes are limited by sight somehow, whether it's photographs, vision, some freaky sensing power, or else they have some way of setting points that they can go to even without looking at it. Each one seems different and many kept the details to themselves, so it's hard to figure out what types are the most common.
The trick will be finding out if I'm one of the ones limited by pure eyeball vision, or if I can also go through camera feeds. That could be useful, since it seems rare. I already know that I'm not the kind that used an extra sensory power, touched people, or anything like that.
I start to daydream about the cool possibilities if I was able to go through cameras. I could team up with a Tinker to make me electronic devices. Drones for camera feeds, and a visor to display it, that would be handy. I could send them out to cover the city, and as soon as I saw a crime, bam! I'd be there to stop it.
Of course, Tinkers are rare, their goods high in demand and needing constant maintenance. I doubt it will ever happen. Even most capes in the Protectorate didn't get Tinker gear unless they paid lots for it, or were best friends with one.
But no point in planning with no way to test it. If I could afford a video camera, I'd have used it to videotape my tormentors and make them stop. If I didn't have to keep replacing stuff they broke or stole, I'd have long ago been able to get the evidence I needed to end the petty feud they seemed to have with me.
It's such a depressing line of thought that I lose all my joy from testing my powers out successfully. I decide to head home and drown my sorrows in cheese.
I arrive with not much time left before the food is done, so I head up to the shower. By the time I'm done showering, I'm pretty angry and frustrated with the whole situation. It all leads back to money, who has it, and who gets screwed by a lack of it.
Dad seems to sense my mood and conversation over dinner is halting, limping, and awkward. I decide to tell him about the homeschooling idea tomorrow, when I'm in a better mood and have planned out how to convince him. No point in bringing it up now. Eventually we separate to do our own thing, falling easily back into the habits and patterns we've developed in the last two years.
The first day of the rest of my life is over.
I think I can do this. I hope I can do this. I need to get better, but I'm going to have to work at it. I will find a way to get money, since money seems to solve most problems in life, and I will find a way to be a hero.
And one day be happy.
As I fall asleep I briefly wonder, should reconsider telling dad? No, I decide. Not yet. He'd stop me, he's too worried about me, thinks I'm too fragile. I've endured everything life has thrown at me, I can endure this too.
~~~~~~~~~~~
AN: Taylor's main strength is her creativity, so I'm keeping that strong. She won't have Oni Lee's Tabula Rasa degradation. As you can see, her power is subtly different, she is all of the clones at once, and her mind is actually boosted a bit from the extra brain matter.
Obviously if she takes damage to all the selves at once, then it will stick, including mental damage like a concussion, but since she can pick which self to be, she can at least always pick the least damaged, better positioned one.
I did give her a minor downgrade to compensate. Oni Lee threw a knife that remained embedded in Skitters mask even after the clone ashed away. I decided that having any object persist is a bit too powerful, since she could just grab a bit of gold, chuck it while cloned, and build up a huge stash that way. I suppose its a good thing that the original Oni Lee was not able to be creative, or else he might have realized how useful that could be, ditched being in a gang, to live a life of luxury. :p
Oni Lee will be known as Kumo Yokai, since he needs a bug themed name to replace the old one. He will still have the blank slate, tabula rasa thing going on in a modified form, as part of his his personality is spread out into the swarm he controls, and thus he loses bits when the bugs get destroyed, slowly making him into the same blank, cold assassin we all know and love.
I figured that for his power to have such a drawback in cannon, either he took a vial so it was a broken/dead shard, or else something about his trigger event made him not want to feel emotions, not want to think, not want to be in control, or something along those lines.
I hope this answers any power questions you have, and feel free to ask if you have more. I'm trying to keep this very faithful to the original, and using many references and official Wildbow posts to figure out the bits not actually in the story, but that I still need to use for mine.
Last edited: Oct 28, 2016
147
Stillwind11
Dec 30, 2015
View discussion
Threadmarks Stamp 1-3
View content
Stillwind11
Stillwind11
Dec 30, 2015
#3
Stamp 1-3
Day two.
I had set my alarm to wake me up bright and early today, lots of work to do. After some breakfast cereal and a goodbye to dad as he went to work, it was time to test out a few other little things on my list and research more online. I'll work on the endurance question from yesterday last, so I don't tire myself out.
First up was the Manton Effect. Now the Manton Effect was pretty famous, it meant that most capes, for whatever reason, were largely immune to their own powers, or at least the bad parts of it. So that meant that someone like Shadow Stalker, a local Ward who could walk through walls, didn't fall through the ground when using her powers.
The second part of the Manton Effect was that if a cape's powers were not personal things like super strength or flight, then most of the time they couldn't affect living things with their power directly. Or if they could affect living things only, then objects would be immune. Well, that's what the Internet told me at least.
The most famous example of breaking the Manton Effect was that of Narwhal. Most capes that could create force fields, could only make them around people and objects like a shield. But Narwhal was the major showcase of what happened when this restriction was broken. She was one of the few capes to ever find a way past it somehow. She was known for being able to create her force fields inside people and objects.
That meant that while a normal shield could stop a bad guy from moving around, she could kill someone with a single thought if she ever wanted to. Making a force field inside a heart, or cutting off heads? There would be no way to stop it without having some kind of defensive power yourself. Luckily for us all, she was a major hero from Canada who was the head of the Guild, a Canadian cape group that focuses on helping with international threats like the Endbringers. This means that her scary powers are on the side of good.
But this all meant that I probably had limitations on my power, and should figure out what they were. At least inanimate objects seemed fine to teleport around. I already knew I could teleport my clothing, and wasn't that a relief. I think any cape out there that couldn't teleport with clothes staying on, probably stayed home and pretended they had no powers. I know I would!
However, testing this proved a bit harder than I thought it would be. I was able to teleport with a potted plant, but then I realized that most capes could affect plants just fine, it was only animals and people that they could not. It was winter, so no trying to dig up a worm. I had no pet to experiment with, but I did remember that there are always a few bugs in the basement.
I know that like many folks, we try to keep the numbers down with lots of pesticides. The PRT provided them to all homeowners cheap since Kumo Yokai lives in this city. (Bug control powers, very nasty assassin type, loved his venomous critters and apparently loved Brockton Bay's mild climate. Thankfully in winter he lies low.)
But I'm sure that with the dramatic bully/locker related stuff going on, plus the money troubles, dad probably hadn't sprayed in a while. Maybe I could find a bug in some forgotten corner?
I almost start to walk down the stairs but then decide with a grin, I'm going to teleport instead. Gotta practice the powers, right? Maybe I just want an excuse to use them, but what's the point of having powers if you don't have fun with them once in a while?
I go bug hunting, rummaging behind boxes and moving furniture out of the way, and quickly realize that we have a lot of junk. We probably need to have a garage sale this summer to get rid of some of it. I use a few extra selves to enhance my perception and it helps immensely, soon I have one live spider trapped in a cup. Time for the moment of truth!
And with no noticeable fanfare, suddenly there are two selves holding two spiders in two sets of cups. I check to make sure that it's still alive, and yup, the bug is moving around energetically in both cups. Yes! Living things are a go.
Also, it is slightly disappointing that I don't have some kind of cool visual or audible effect to accompany my teleportation. But at least that means I can be stealthy if I need to. Plus the ash dissolve is neat. Too bad 'Phoenix', and 'The Phoenix' were long ago taken as cape names, something like that would have been so thematically perfect.
So test one is complete. This means that I can (probably) take people with me. I don't even have to fight criminals to save people, I can just pop them away from danger. Next up is mass. According to my quick research, most capes that can teleport long distances are limited by mass, touch, or other stuff. The few that are not, like the world famous Strider, are super useful.
I already am pretty sure that I'm a touch only type of teleporter, despite many attempts to prove otherwise, so now to see if I have a weight limit. Might be cool to be able to teleport a whole bus full of people around.
I did research on capes pretty much the entire morning, and late last night too. Especially focusing on the teleporters and clone makers. It seems that on average if a cape has a major strength in one area, they would be weaker in another, but not always. Some just get lucky and have super superpowers.
While I was looking for a spider, it turned out that dad had hidden an old weight lifting set in the basement. This is good news since I might start using it to build strength later, when I'm not still weak from the infections and hospital stay. It is way too heavy to lift easily, so I just take out each part individually. I won't need them for long, and then they can go back in the box until I need them again.
I go through all of them just fine, teleporting with each weight with no problems. I'm not expecting any, but it never hurts to be sure. As a last test I even combine them into a ruined backpack that had been used as a football by some guys Emma had charmed with her looks, for a total weight of 50 lbs.
I'm a bit leery about this because there are small rips all over the backpack, but I hope that it holds long enough for me to get a good test out of it. I carefully stand up and quickly port away into two, three, then four selves. Seems good. It's not much weight so I still have more testing to do, but I still feel a ton of irrational joy from the benchmark I've just reached. I even have one self do a little dance as another self, the one I plan on keeping around, starts to take off the backpack, as it is really, really heavy.
Suddenly a weight starts to shift from the victory dance. It slips out, and I notice too late the sudden lack of weight.
"Ow!" The stupid thing landed on my foot! Oh god, I hope I didn't break my foot... I melt that self away hoping that the pain will go away with it. Much to my surprise, it does. Huh.
I felt it plain as day when I was, uh, me? Fuck, I'm gonna need to invent new words for this weirdness. But as my other selves melt away due to the time limit, I inspect my remaining two feet. Nothing. That's good, I had kinda wondered what would happen if one self was hurt in a fight. It's nice to know that hurting one me won't hurt all of the me's at the same time.
Oh, crap, what if I have only a certain number of selves, and if one is hurt it stays hurt?
"That would be incredibly lame." I gripe to myself.
I cascade out my full array of selves, two, three, four. Relief as none of them are hurt in the slightest. Ok, problem solved. No lingering injury.
I sigh out loud and can't help but shake my head and say to myselves, "Oh Taylor, it's been almost two years without friends, and now you are making puns to yourself. The depths you have sunk to..."
Back to mass testing. After I put away all the weights, I go upstairs to try with some heavier household objects. I first try to port with the kitchen table, but it fails to happen. I'm sure it's not much heavier than the backpack full of weights... This could be bad.
I cascade into four selves to think about it, and quickly realize that it was probably from the lack of clear space for the second table to go into. Otherwise I'd be able to port myself into solid objects, and wouldn't that be horrifying. Better test this to be sure.
Cringing, I try to port a new self into a tiny storage space, nope. That's a relief. At least that Manton Effect thing is good for something other than limiting me.
Ok, so compact but heavy things to test with then. Ooh, an appliance might work, and I can look up how much it weighs online. I head over to the fridge and give it a bear hug. Feeling incredibly awkward, I try to port to the empty part of the kitchen. Nope. This time I'm sure there was enough room where I was aiming for. It's a skinny fridge, but still no go.
Electrical interference? The plug is still in the wall?
I try with a flashlight, and it works fine, so it's not the electricity from being on. But try as I might, I can't get the fridge to port. Maybe it is too heavy? I can't even lift it, and looking it up online, it's 130 lbs. Add in more for the food inside, and it's probably 170 lbs total.
So unless I have to be able to lift something off the floor entirely to port, then my limit is starting to look kinda low. I won't even be able to port away with a particularly fat man if this is true.
If I have to lift it to port it, then I'm gonna need some tinker-tech power armor to be able to lift things. I groan out loud in frustration. "Ok, so one roadblock achieved unless the 'Quad-Core' selves can think of something." I mumble to myself.
The first thing I think of when fully cascaded is that perhaps the fridge plug is connecting it to the rest of the house. I proceed to test with a plugged in floor lamp, but sadly it works just fine. I end up with a floor lamp in my hand, the cord end dropping to the floor with a 'tak' as it falls from it's previous orientation.
Next up, floor or no floor? The answer is that the floor and other surfaces are acceptable for objects to rest upon, and still be ported by me. So I can put my hand on a paper that is on the kitchen table, port, and it will fall to the ground from my other self's hand as there is no more table holding it up.
At least these experiments make me realize that I barely need any contact at all to teleport something, no need to hug fridges anymore. I can see some possibilities in that, touch some guy's weapon, make a new self far away, he thinks he still has it until I keep that self and his current weapon dissolves to ash.
I might not be able to permanently create stuff like some of the guys who make minions and clones, but at least I can move it even if I'm barely in contact with it. It even works through winter gloves and shoes, so I guess I can affect things connected to stuff I'm touching.
Now, how do I determine my exact weight limit? Since I don't have to be able to lift it, and being plugged in doesn't count as connecting it, the fridge might actually be too heavy for me. I decide to take the easy way out and make another thinking quad. It only takes a few seconds to get the brilliant idea of using buckets of water, after flashing back to some junior high science experiments with density. Water has a precise weight per volume, one easily found online.
It takes time, but I use a measuring cup and start to fill buckets with water, keeping track of how much is in each one on a piece of paper. Eventuality I have a few heavy duty buckets and one mop pail full of various weights of water. It is hard to work with the heavy containers and I have to move slowly to not spill, but I am able to fill one up, stabilize it on the sink ledge, then teleport it to where it needs to go.
I set two on the table in reach of my hands, two others on the floor by my feet. Time to test this out. By touching them with my hands and feet, I can port them all at once. It adds a touch of complexity to the wave of balance, to the duality, but it is easily managed. I want the buckets, and the water, and my clothes, nothing else...
It works! A huge sploosh and mess is created as the hand buckets fall and drench everything nearby. Oops. I quickly dismiss that self in shock, and laugh as everything goes back to normal, but with ash slowly fading everywhere the water went. The one knickknack I toppled remains knocked over from the water, but it didn't break so it's fine.
The amount of water I just ported is 100 lbs total. Each bucket is a pain to move but I carefully swap out one bucket for another larger one waiting on the counter.
110 lbs, good.
120 lbs, still good.
Darn, 130 lbs is too much apparently. I guess the fridge was too heavy after all. Damn it! Daydreams of teleporting cars and buildings go poof. So much for that.
Time to start scooping water out and keeping track of when I can port again. Eventually, at approximately 122 lbs, I can port again. That number makes be blink in surprise. That is eerily close to how much I weigh... Interesting? And since I'm sure my current clothes, plus the plastic buckets themselves weigh at least a couple of pounds, I come to the unfortunate conclusion that I can port only as much mass as myself. That would be useful for a big dude, but I'm kinda useless as a skinny rail aren't I?
"Note to self, gain weight." I sigh sadly. I guess I can't just run only, I need to build muscle, somehow. With my genetics, getting super fat would never work, never mind how unhealthy that would be. Of course, it could be a fluke number randomly generated by the universe. I'll have to test this again later when my weight has changed enough for it to be noticeable.
One last test. I cascade out to all four selves, each with their own duplicated buckets splooshing to the floor and creating a huge soggy mess. It's actually kinda fun to create a big mess like this, one that I don't have to clean up. And the good news is that cascading out to four selves is not affected by the mass I'm porting, nor vice versa. That would have sucked even more.
Aquatic experiments done, I busy my selves with pouring the water back down the drain and cleaning up the few spills that stuck from prior moving things around, then putting the buckets back where they came from so my dad will be none the wiser.
Lunch break time! All this heavy lifting has been a bit much for me, I'm still weak from the hospital. Tasty sandwiches and some leftover lasagna are just what I want right now. Normally I'd eat less but I suppose it's time to start overindulging. It's not like I couldn't gain at least another 10 lbs and still look skinny, I might even look normal for once.
Then it's time for the endurance test, more thinking, and more note taking.
This time with three selves constantly rotating every couple of seconds, I manage to last almost a whole hour before getting mentally exhausted. This is good though, if this holds up, I can expect either one and a half hours with only two selves, or two hours. It depends on if each self halves the time, or only takes away a half hour of it.
Still, so far it's not looking good overall for power strength. There are definitely many capes with more useful teleportation powers. I suppose that it's a good thing I also have that duplication aspect with my selves lingering for a bit, or else it would be awful in comparison to most other teleporters. I'll just have to optimize that five second advantage to make up for it.
I review my notes. The more equipment I carry, the safer I'll be, especially armor, but I'll also reduce my ability to save people. Right now I can only save little children and animals. But any equipment I do carry will basically multiply in effectiveness with every self, so it probably trumps being able to port people at this stage. Not when I can only port a small subset of the population. So for now, I'll focus on getting stronger and designing a costume with lots of options and useful things I can take advantage of duplicating.
I'll have to tell others that I can't port people. At least until I can actually port a useful person or two around. Hmm, perhaps other capes that are also young and small? I know that the local Wards have a tiny looking gal named Vista, I bet she'd be light enough for me to move with.
Of course, that would mean joining the Wards, but it's not the worst option in the world. The possibility of Tinker-tech gear, teammates that are hopefully light enough to move around... I could actually be useful if I had the right team. Of course, government oversight, red tape, and teen drama in a more enclosed social space would be major downsides, but it is definitely on the table for now.
Reviewing the last of the notes, I also seem to have figured out a good strategy for talking to dad about not going back to school ever again. A bit of research is still needed, I gotta be able to back it up with hard data, but I'm feeling confident. Even if I never manage to become a big hero, at least I'll have saved myself from the terror trio. (Again.)
So off to the computer I go, ignoring homework in favour of research and possibly a nap. I still have to try jogging later today, and after the bucket antics I'm beat.
Last edited: Oct 28, 2016
139
Stillwind11
Dec 30, 2015
View discussion
Threadmarks Stamp 1-4
View content
Stillwind11
Stillwind11
Dec 30, 2015
#4
Stamp 1-4
I think yesterday went well.
Too bad that waking up this morning is a pain, literally. I should not have tried jogging after all that heavy lifting, because my entire body is sore. Not just my legs but my arms. Oh my poor arms! Even mostly porting the heavy masses around still didn't save me from this. Ugh. Such regret.
It's enough to keep me in bed just lazing about for a solid hour before I finally force myself to get up.
At least dad agreed to give the homeschooling a try, saying that if I could get a good grade on the year-end standardized tests, then he'd let me keep doing it for next two years as long as my grades don't slip. There's all sorts of official online progress checking things I have to pass too, but I managed to get him to agree that it might take me a bit to catch up and get good grades, so he should only decide my future based on the final one.
Dad was kinda relieved at the idea of me not going back there, despite the fact that he's basically trusting me to teach myself. (Not something most teenagers can be trusted with admittedly.)
I think that as long as I'm not failing the year-end tests too badly, then it won't matter what grade I get. Anything will be an improvement over last year, or how this year was shaping up, and he knows it.
So, time to get all the forms I need printed off at the library, then fill them out for dad. He basically delegated everything to me and is just gonna to show up to the school in a few days to tell them I'm not coming back. He figures that if I want to prove that I'm capable of teaching myself, I can also sign myself up for it.
Oh crud, I'll have to set up an appointment for him too. I should call them this morning before I forget. But first, I think to celebrate I'm going make french toast! I deserve a tasty high calorie breakfast for all this pain and suffering I'm doing in the name of heroism.
Too bad dad had to leave for work early today, he loves french toast. Admittedly, sleeping in for an hour probably contributed to me not being up in time to eat breakfast with him, so it's kinda my fault.
Cooking is kinda fun when you can help yourself with powers. One self is regularly sent out to stir the batter every now and then, one gets sent out to flip the toast occasionally, and I use one to amuse me by trying to juggle eggs and dropping them repeatedly. Good thing the ashy mistakes dissolve fast, and no real eggs get wasted.
Soon I'm eating a double helping of breakfast, at the same time as I wash the dishes. It's a bit tricky since I can only do the dishes in five second bursts and have to be able to look at where I'm porting to, but I get the rhythm of it down quickly. It won't save me a lot of time on chores, but the novelty of it sure helps make it fun.
Stuffed almost unpleasantly full, I decide to make the phone call first, to give my stomach time to digest. Appointment now set up for dad at the end of the week, I get my book bag, some nearly-due library books to return, and head off to go print some forms.
~~~~~~~~~~~
Right, that was horribly boring. I only realized after the fact that I should have just taken the forms home to fill out with a couple of selves to help. But at least the librarian was nice to me, she even let me use their private printer and not the public one that charges a few cents per page.
I guess I must look more pitiful than normal after that hospitalization... Go me? Work that pity Taylor, work it! I can't help but sigh aloud, getting the attention of some mean looking old lady sitting near me on the bus. I should start a blog, 'Diary of a 15 year old cape! Look at me angst! Marvel at my pity powers!'
I end up letting out a snort of laughter to myself, making the grandmother look at me funny. The old battleaxe glares at me and looks like she considers me the worst kind of hoodlum teenager. No doubt me not being in school means I'm up to all sorts of no good. The disapproving looks don't fade until I get off the bus at my stop.
Time to go home and do the final session of endurance testing, then I had better start studying for school in earnest. Actually, maybe I can study while testing? Hmm, no, a brief four-self cascade in the living-room quickly makes me re-think that idea.
I seem to be able to keep the conclusions I have made while in think mode, meaning that the notes I've been taking are not strictly necessary, and should probably be burned later.
But the exact path I used to get there is kinda nebulous and hazy once I am no longer in cascade mode. (I seem to have settled on that as a term for this... thing I'm doing. That's kinda how it feels to quickly make multiples of me, then let em fade after their time is up, so it seems appropriate.)
Anyways, to find a solution to a problem or boost my brain temporarily, the cascade is great. But to learn how to learn, how to think? I don't know if it would help me at all. Not hinder as far as I can tell, but it could end up not doing much. I have limited energy for experimentation, no reason not to take it slow and be methodical about it.
I'll have to test this with something not important, like reading a normal, fun book, before I can know for sure how my odd new mental boosting power works. I'm not procrastinating on studying at all... Nope, no delaying here...
Oh well, onward, for science!
Two hours later, and I finally stop my endurance test. Phew. Looks like the duration is indeed cut in half for each self, so if I ever manage a fifth self, I will probably only have fifteen minutes worth of constant use. At least until I get better. It's possible that with practice, it will get easier to hold the mental balance required, letting me do it for longer and longer.
Unfortunately it turns out that while I can read two books at once this way, both suffer from the frequent interruptions and trying to process the two different plots at the same time. I seem to be able to retain the info from the first one sorta ok, but the second one I will have to re-read for sure. I feel like I got lost on the plot points, and got things confused with the other story I was reading.
Unlike my perceptions, which seem to naturally be able to process multiple inputs at once, my interior thoughts are a bit more singular, no matter how many times I cascade. At least physical tasks I can multi-task on much easier than mental ones.
On the plus side, having both selves concentrate on the same book at the same time actually helped, a lot!
I didn't think it would help much, since I wouldn't be able to remember the thought flow, but apparently since the other self collapsed every 5 seconds, I got frequent 'status updates' with the current conclusions and thoughts. That seems to have worked like a charm.
I didn't come up with anything wildly new, but it is as if it added more depth, more insight, to what I was reading. It's as if I had extra time to study all the nuances of the book, like I was going to write a book report about it for a class, not just reading it for fun. Stuff like the literary style they used, the significance of the word choices and trying to decide if something was foreshadowing. I think tomorrow I'll have to try this with three and four selves, to see what the optimal study pattern is gonna be.
I settle into my study nook on the couch, and begin to review all of last years material so I have a good grounding for what is to come. I feel kinda content right now. It feels like I'm making steady progress, learning about my new powers, dealing with school so that I can learn in a way that isn't torture, and having neatly solved the bully problem for good.
Still lots to do and learn, but for now I better get to studying for real. With luck, my mental boost will be the difference between barely getting my grades up in time for the end of the year, and acing my tests enough to get a scholarship to a University in a few years.
Tomorrow I'll start thinking about cape stuff like names and a costume.
Last edited: Oct 28, 2016
119
Stillwind11
Dec 30, 2015
View discussion
Threadmarks Stamp 1-5
View content
Stillwind11
Stillwind11
Dec 30, 2015
#5
Stamp 1-5
Welp, disappointment abounds today. Lucky for me, feeling sorry for yourself is hard to do when you are busy trying to chop vegetables with a self that only lasts five seconds. I'm making a fancy supper, mostly because I have nothing better to do and my brain needs a break.
The first major disappointment was the fact that my brain boosting trick will not work with multiple selves rotating in. It seems like having a gap in selves is needed to properly 'set' the enhanced information, so having more than one self up just hinders the process. It looks like instead of getting to enjoy a full 'Quad-Core' for studying purposes, I get only a mild boost with a double. Still better than baseline me, but not as good as I was hoping for.
A quick burst of four selves, then letting them fade and repeating that might work better, but it would be a waste of time and energy since I'd have to study in 5 second increments, not enough time to read more than a sentence or two.
At least I can super-study for up to two hours a day. In fact after the brief experimentation, I made sure to get in a good hour and a half of studying this morning before I did anything else. I figure I'll leave myself some leeway in case I want to do more power testing later today. Plus my power does seem to slowly regenerate during the day, so it seems like I should have a full hour more of super-study tonight if I don't use it all up early.
The next disappointment was that all the good cape names are taken! I chop more angrily at the vegetables upon remembering this, narrowly missing my fingers. At first I wanted something to do with the cool ash effect, maybe something evocative of movement, like Ash Dancer. But then I learned that pyrokinetics are pretty common and they snapped up anything decent and non-villainous related to fire very fast.
Next came the teleportation based names, alas the good ones were all taken too. It seems that while teleportation is rarer as powers go, the flight and speedster capes ended up sharing the same pool of good names. I briefly thought of something like Balance or Cascade, to go with my internal feelings while using my power, but they were taken by some obscure physical type cape in Australia, and a hydrokinetic in Florida.
I ended up with a list of two dozen or so names that were not already taken, but I wasn't terribly enthusiastic about any of them. Things like Jaunt, Jumper, Transit, ect. All generic, bland, or not really me.
One self lets out a huff as I stir some sauce, I was definitely not going to pick a name that emphasized my lame cloning ability, plus they were also my backup plan for keeping myself safe from harm.
I don't have much going for me, so I have to hold onto any advantage I can. I even have a tentative plan for how I'm going to conceal the true extent of my duplicates abilities to anyone except my future teammates.
I try to forcibly calm myself down before I lose a finger. I figure I can mull over the names, adding and subtracting until I get a nice short list that I actually like. I'm in no hurry, I can take a month or two to decide. I can't just pick the first one I don't hate. I have to check if it is easily made fun of or turned into a bad nickname, how will it get shortened, how does it sound when I say it out loud, and so on. Names are important, and I don't want to get named something horrible by the media like "Chubster." (Yup, some poor overweight cape is actually called that, the poor guy.)
Next up on the list of things that turned out disappointing was costumes. Obviously I couldn't do too much decorating without knowing my cape name, since I might want to theme it a bit, but that was probably not going to be my biggest issue. Costumes were harder than one might think.
While members of official teams surely had sources for that stuff, the rest of us were left to either buy costumes, put them together piecemeal with things bought from a store, or make them from scratch. Each option had it's problems.
If you bought a costume online, you ran the risk of being traced, which could blow your secret identity before you'd even put a costume on. You could instead put a costume together with stuff bought piecemeal, but very few people could do that and look good. The final option, putting a costume together yourself from scratch, was just a hell of a lot of work and you could run into the issues of the prior two options – being traced or winding up with a lame costume – depending on where you got your materials and how you went about it.
I didn't have a way to put it together myself, not easily. No sewing skills to speak of, no Tinker powers to let me make it from random junk, nada.
I have a bit of money saved up, so I could probably buy a few things here and there to add to a costume, but I'd have to take my time if I wanted to be discreet. I definitely didn't have the cash to just outright buy a custom costume online from some anonymous Tinker or cape with the appropriate powers.
The other problem was safety. I didn't want to just go out in some skintight leotard. I was not invulnerable. I didn't have anything defensive or offensive about my powers. The only thing that made me think that I could possibly be a hero and not die right away, was the fact that I was pretty sure that as long as all of my selves didn't die at the same time, I'd be ok.
Maybe.
I still have to find a way to test what happens when a self actually dies, since I'm sure its bound to happen sooner or later. It's a dangerous world out there, and online statistics show that most capes don't live very long, especially the independent ones.
Obviously something protective in Kevlar would probably not be cheap, nor easy to find. Motorcycle gear tended to be tough enough to let bikers survive wipe-outs. Probably stab resistant too, but still pricey. Something medieval style would be way too heavy, and likely not protective enough. Useless for my purposes. I seem to recall that many emergency room doctors and paramedics would get stab-resistant coats and gloves because of all the druggies who sometimes went ballistic on them?
Not to mention some kind of eye protection was super important. My power was all about being able to see things to be able to port there. All it would take would be something like sand thrown in my face to blind me and make me defenseless. Plus, I have crappy vision.
I wish my powers had magically fixed my eyes so I didn't need glasses, but alas, it was not to be. So prescription goggles or a visor, or perhaps contact lenses to wear under something protective? I'd have to see what was cheap and available. I might be able to get something colored, making me look different and helping to hide my identity.
Most of the day was spent agonizing over cape names, costumes, and studying. I have the feeling that this is going to be an ongoing headache for me. On the plus side, I also found a few weight lifting exercises I can do at home with dad's basement weight set. I figure that in a month or two I might be in shape enough to actually do something about my plans. Until then, I'm going to keep saving up my meager allowance, keep on pushing myself physically, and start looking into all the thrift stores and pawn shops in the city for cheap costume bits.
Once I have a basic costume that hides my identity, I can start to practice my powers outdoors, working out how to use it best in a fight. I still have lots of momentum based tests I want to try, along with tech tests and injury/death tests. Although I might need outside help with some of those.
Maybe the economy will get better and I can get dad to pay for self-defense lessons? I'll have to learn how to fight somehow...
Oops, speaking of Dad, I can hear his car pulling up!
I hastily stop my power practice, settling into the self that had been stirring the sauce. When dad walks in, I can't help but give him a large grin. This one is half fake, since I'm a bit disappointed that I have to stop using my power now. But it's good to see him relax, he is finally starting to get used to me being happy again.
"Hey Dad, can you take over the chopping? I ran out of time and this sauce needs tending! You can put them in the bowl over there, they are going into the oven later."
"I'm fine, thanks for asking." He responds with a teasing grin wide enough to match my own.
Grabbing my abandoned cutting knife, we settle into a familiar routine. It's not much, we still don't have anything to talk about with each other, but the mood, the silent companionship... It no longer feels strained and stifled, no longer filled with quite so many unspoken regrets.
Last edited: Oct 28, 2016
121
Stillwind11
Dec 30, 2015
View discussion
Threadmarks Stamp 1-6
View content
Stillwind11
Stillwind11
Dec 30, 2015
#6
Stamp 1-6
I'm on the roof of an apartment block, looking down at the city. I'm on a rooftop!
I'm giddy just thinking about where I am right now. I get the feeling that when I finally get into a cape fight, my head will explode from all the excitement.
Looking out at the small section of city that's visible from here, I don't actually see anything really interesting. Some alleyways filled with trash, melting snow, lights on or off in random patterns in nearby buildings. Lots of couples walking around on the boardwalk, going to restaurants together. I picked this building only because it's taller than its neighbors, so it gives me a better view.
I also learned an important lesson about trying to port up to a rooftop from the ground. Since I couldn't actually see the surface of the roof, my first try ended up with me standing on thin air for a brief millisecond, but unfortunately beside the apartment building, not on top of it. As I started to fall down to the ground, I realized that oops, slight miscalculation. Being able to see the general area of where I want to go to is not good enough.
Luckily no harm had been done to more than one self, and on my second try I had managed to cascade out another me as soon as I got a glimpse of the actual roof surface. I'm thinking that maybe I should port up higher in the air next time, to give me more time to pick a spot to land.
I spin around slowly, snow crunching under my thrift store military boots, taking in all the other rooftops that I can see from here. Cascading out a self to each spot, I'm soon at my limit, each self on a different roof, looking out at the city from a different heights and locations. Suddenly the evening is a bit less dark, sounds magnified slightly.
I can hear one couple arguing in an apartment below about how the boyfriend hadn't made reservations for a restaurant today. The woman is upset because it is Valentines, she wanted to go out, and now all the good places are full.
I see a small family of cats eating something in a dim alleyway, pausing every few bites to look around warily, ears and tails twitching. Snow gathered in corners where the wind has swept it to.
Laughing, my selves melt away till I'm solo once more. I repeat this a few more times before I get used to it. I won't be able to do much when it gets truly dark out, so while its still twilight, I'd best get to having fun! It's Valentines, so what better way to spend it than on a date with me, myself, and I?
Quickly I port out up high over the city, towards downtown. I don't end up as high as I had thought I would, so I use my distant falling form as a reference to port again even higher up. Distances are kinda hard to judge in the air, but I think that if I'm fast enough I can use myself as a marker, leapfrog style. As I feel myself falling, that odd heart-lifting sensation, I port to a distant lit-up billboard. As soon as I am sure that my perch is stable and not going to fall off, I start to cascade out from here abandoning my previous safe spot.
I cover a lot of distance heading south, past the college, now I'm among skyscrapers and tall office buildings. Arcadia High is near here but I bypass it, headed towards the higher parts of the downtown area. I want to go up as high as I can!
I don't fancy my chances of not falling off the pointy, sleek skyscrapers, but lots of the older Chicago-style buildings have flat roofs and elaborate decorations that would make for good hand-holds and spots to perch.
I think I must have been porting for fifteen minutes, just trying out different vantage points, ways of getting there, and so on, before I accidentally get spotted. A couple of guys are standing on one of the office building roofs, smoking cigarettes and hunching over in their jackets from the chill. They look up at me startled as I appear, and I just look back at them for a second, confused.
Quickly checking that I have a safe self to fall back on, I melt that self fast, before the two guys can do anything about it. I guess it makes sense that some people might use the roofs for smoke breaks, but I hope they think that I'm a figment of their imagination. I'm not ready to be a hero yet, so I need to lie low.
Although seeing them miserable from the cold makes me glad that my costume is warm. Bulky sure, but at least it's well insulated. I'll have to figure out a variant for summer or else I'll get roasted alive by the sun, but that's something to worry about later.
I'm starting to decide that I don't like the helmet part of my costume, it restricts my vision too much. I have to turn my head more than I'm used to, just to see where I'm going. Plus I had to pull all my hair in a loose bun just to get it all in here. (And I have a lot of hair.)
It's the one major thing that I didn't buy used, since I read online that once a helmet has protected you from a crash, you should replace it. I wouldn't trust a used one, it might only have been sold after being in a crash. At least it wasn't too hard to get accustomed to the contact lenses. I kinda like the freedom of not having to worry about glasses.
I'm making my way to the shopping district now, away from the Bay. I got bored of the heights of downtown and now its time to try something new. I was tempted to try porting out to the refitted oil rig that serves as the East-North-East Protectorate headquarters, but they probably have countermeasures for that kind for thing, and might take it for some kind of attack. Getting covered in foam and labeled as hostile is not on my to-do list. Tonight is about finally stretching my legs, so to speak.
Ah, there we go, up ahead I see the biggest mall in the city, thronging with a younger crowd. Not many good tall buildings here, except for the mall itself. It's more wide than tall really, but there are skylights in the ceiling so I can look inside without showing myself. The crowd is mostly kids who are too young to go out to fancy restaurants, but still taking advantage of the holiday to flirt and date.
The movie theater looks packed as the parking-lot is completely filled, drivers circling like sharks, waiting for an opening. It is interesting being up here. I can see the crowds moving, swirling as they shop, walk, talk and interact. The traffic outside a counterpoint, a similar dance but one masked by steel, channeled to the strict lines of the road and parking-lot.
I'm so busy people watching from a couple of different skylights that I almost don't notice a cape approaching in the air, but it's dark enough that the small lights on their costume stand out. Outlined is an armored teenager riding some kind of hoverboard. The board itself has some headlights on the front to presumably let him see where he was going in the dark, but they are pretty dim right now. Probably on low power just to cut the twilight's gloom.
I quickly melt into the self that is closest to him, just in case he only spotted that one. Can't be giving away all my secrets so easily. I'm not too worried about being attacked, since I'm pretty sure this is Kid Win, a local Ward.
Brockton Bay has a few flying capes, but most of them have some pretty visible light effects to go with it. New Wave, the independent hero group, has all sorts of light show stuff associated with their powers. Lady Photon, Brandish, Laserdream, Shielder, ect. All would be pretty easy to spot. Then there was the villain Purity who shone like a spotlight, she was hard to miss. This means that it's hard to not see an incoming flyer in this city, especially at night. Kid Win was probably the only slightly stealthy one among them, and only if he turned off his running lights.
My caution proves valid as he arcs in the air, headed right towards me. Looks like he did spot me after all. I'm tense, but only a bit. He's a good guy, so chances are he wants to talk first. Eventually, after I make no hostile actions and barely move at all aside from turning to face him, he lands on the mall roof a good distance away from me. No doubt he want to give me lots of space, just in case I'm a bad guy.
"So, what brings you out here on a night like this?" He calls out playfully. "No date?"
"Nah, I'm testing out my powers and sorta just wandering around. Don't worry, I'm a hero, or will be soon." I hasten to reassure him in a low, calm tone.
I can tell that he has relaxed a bit because he moves his hands away from his hip, likely away from some kind of taser or laser gun. With a Tinker, you could never know what they had up their sleeve one day to the next. It's why they were so fiercely recruited by any major groups, as soon as they popped up. I might not know much about capes, but this much pretty much everyone knows.
"Uh, can I ask what exactly you are testing? And maybe your cape name? Gotta be able to give the head honchos something when I get back."
"Only if you first tell me how you spotted me. I figured that in the dark I'd have been pretty hard to spot but you made a bee-line right toward me."
Kid Win shrugs and taps his helmet. "Heat vision. It's the only way to be able to patrol properly at night, and people stand out pretty well against the cold. Your turn."
I shrug back at him, "I have some possible names, but I haven't decided on anything yet. Still testing my power. Don't want to pick something that doesn't fit me. As for powers, mainly I'm a teleporter."
I grin under my helmet, even though I know he won't be able to see it due to the mirror tint on the visor. Then I turn my head to the side a bit and port to the other side of the skylight, melting my first self almost immediately. Seems pretty seamless, so all my practicing has paid off. I quickly port back, but a bit closer to Kid Win so that the distance won't force us to raise our voices as much.
He lets out a low whistle, "Nice man, we don't have a teleporter on the team at all. Dude, please tell me you are gonna join up with the Wards?"
"I don't know... It's a rather permanent decision to make, and I don't really want to have to deal with typical teen drama right now. Not to mention government bureaucracy and red tape. I mean, having access to gear like your visor, and a team to back me up would be nice, but not sure that it's worth it."
"Oh come on, at least take a tour? I can show you around, you can meet the others. There's actually not much drama in the group, so if you meet them yourself, I'm sure that would put to rest one of your concerns."
"I still don't know if I have the time, I have lots of stuff I want to test and figure out with my powers. I'm pretty busy right now."
Kid Wins posture seems to straighten up a bit, and I figure he's had an idea, or else someone was talking to him with something built into his gear. "Ok, how about we help? I mean, you want to be a hero right? So we could help you test out anything that might be too tricky to do with just your own resources. I'm not sure what kinds of things a teleporter might want to test, but there must be something or else you wouldn't have mentioned it."
"You sure they would help me test my powers without actually joining up?" I ask him skeptically.
"It doesn't come up often but I'm sure that they would, if only so that they know exactly what you can do in case you go supervillain, right?"
He lets out a laugh, but I'm seriously considering the idea. It makes sense as a possible motivation. They might expend some time and resources helping me because I'm another possible hero, and they might lure me in to the Wards that way. But it also lets them know more about me, since I'm sure most of the time the PRT don't get to learn the details of some villains power until after it's too late. So there is a good chance that they would help without me actually having to join, and it would let me asses them better, to see if I might want to actually join.
I realize I've been silent for a few seconds, so I nod. "Ok, if they agree to a tour and helping me test a few thing I can't do alone easily, I'll show up. How will I know if things are good to go?"
"Uhhh, good question. Let me think for a second..." As he ponders this, I study him. He's a bit shorter than me and sounds young, around my age maybe? It's hard to tell since his helmet alters the sound of his voice somewhat. Mine does too, muffling it and making it sound a bit deeper and more hollow, but I suspect his also has a bit of Tinker tech in there to give it some extra masking.
In the dim light, it's hard to make out the details of his costume, but I've seen the photos so I can imagine the bits that I can't see. It's really well put together armor, red and gold in color. His visor is red, he favors laser guns, and he is always changing his accessory's out for new ones. I can't remember much else about him, I'll have to go online later and double check his PHO wiki page.
"Ok, I got it!" He pipes up again, drawing my attention back to the discussion. "You can make a PHO account right? And I know you don't have a cape name picked out yet, but it can just be a temp username till you figure it out. You tell me what name you'll use, and I'll go back and clear things with the Protectorate, let them know everything. Then once you make the account, we message you, set up a time, then you can just pop on in!"
He hesitates for a second, rethinking his words, "Uh, although don't literally do that or it might set off some defenses and then everyone gets covered in foam for a few hours. So. Not. Fun. I set them off once by accident with a new invention, so trust me when I say it's something to be avoided." He sheepishly rubs the back of his helmet.
I can't help but admit to myself that I like this kid. He's not pretentious, he doesn't act superior or anything. He seems just like any excitable guy who isn't afraid to crack jokes at his expense. So far, a normal person. It's reassuring, makes me worry less about this Ward thing.
I quickly think about what username to use temporarily. "Ok, I don't know if I'll be able to get the exact username I want, it might already be taken. But yours is not exactly a secret right? I'll message you tomorrow on the PHO from an account that has 'message' in the username. It might have to be something else like; the message, a message, messenger, but it should be in that theme."
"Wait, a message, from message?" He sounds confused, like he doesn't fully get it.
"Yeah, that way you know it's an account only for passing on messages, so no one will think that it's my cape name."
"Yeah that makes sense, I guess. Ok, I'll keep an eye out for it and I'll be testing you with a question, just to be sure. We'll have you in for that tour before you know it!"
Kid Win starts to step back on his hoverboard but pauses, "Oh and I'll be sure to spread the word around that the new cape guy in a motorcycle helmet and dark coat is a friendly, but you should maybe think about putting some lighter touches on there. Right now you look kinda villainous and that could get you hurt fast with some jumpy capes."
I am taken aback by that, did I really look so villainous? I mean, I knew I was going for stealth so I could get around and not be noticed much until I was ready to actually do some heroics, but I didn't think it was that bad...
Kid Win continues on, heedless of the doubts he was stirring up, "I recommend a stencil cut out of some paper and some spray-paint. That's what I did at first to jazz up my stuff until I could build a proper set of armor. Course, I got recruited for the Wards soon after, but it helped at the time. Good luck dude!" He calls out as he lifts off, leaving me behind as he continues his patrol.
As soon as I'm sure I am out of range of his heat sensor, I port away. It's getting really dark and I might as well go home. I'll have to go to the library early tomorrow to make an anonymous account on the PHO, since there is no way I'm making it on my home computer. I might not be an expert, but I was top in computer class for a reason. IP addresses are a thing, and you can't trust proxy servers for anything other than getting around the schools block on certain game websites. (Not that I go to school anymore.)
Wait...
Guy in a motorcycle helmet? 'Dude' is vague enough, so is the 'nice man', but combine it all together and apparently Kid Win thought I was a boy. And I only noticed it after I had two selves up to port around and think about the conversation, so it's too late to correct him.
Huh. I don't know whether I should be insulted, or pleased.
I already knew I had no figure so to speak, especially not with all the thick gear I'm wearing to keep warm and protect against random villain attacks. With my best feature, (my long curly brown hair) hidden by the helmet, it's probably not easy to pick out anything feminine about me. No face to look at for clues, and I'm a teen so my voice can be forgiven for being a bit high pitched. Probably doesn't help that I'm so tall. Most girls stop growing at 5'4" and I'm already 4 inches past that, and still growing too.
But on the other hand, what better disguise could I have for my real identity? People would be looking for a guy my height and build, and would probably assume I'm older too from the height. As long as I make sure to keep my voice low, it should work.
I make a quick quad-cascade on some random rooftop to think about it, and decide that yes, I'll do it. Pretending to be male is the best way to hide my identity, and it won't even be that hard to do. I'll add in a few touches to help emphasize it when I take Kid Win's advice about the decorating.
Decision made, I finish porting the rest of the way home over the next half hour, taking frequent breaks. I'm pretty exhausted power-wise as I sneak into my room by porting right in using a window I had left clear of curtains, and a dim lamp light on inside to let me see my destination. It makes me realize that I should probably do more walking next time, to save the teleports for when I needed them. I didn't have unlimited teleporting and every time I went out like this would be a day I couldn't super-study as much.
Hiding my costume in the depths of my messy closet, I strip down and crawl into the suddenly very needed bed. Ahh... Bliss...
~~~~~~~~~~~
AN: Yes, I know I spent 5 chapters on power testing. But with any luck this story ends up really long and it seems like less. Plus they were short chapters. I was trying to just bang them out fast in my limited spare time. So here you go, Taylor is out, about and meeting other capes. The plot has started!
Oh and keep in mind that since Taylor gets a different power in this story, she is no longer a possible way to save the world, at least not in the same way. Thus Cauldron, aka mostly Contessa, will be manipulating things slightly differently this time around. Their main focus is still on making lots of powerful capes so that at least a few of them might be able to help in the end days, but small changes have been made to the 'Path to Victory'. (This is an Alternate Universe after all.)
Last edited: Oct 28, 2016
131
Stillwind11
Dec 30, 2015
View discussion
Threadmarks Stamp 1-7
View content
Stillwind11
Stillwind11
Dec 30, 2015
#7
Stamp 1-7
Four days later and I was in my slightly upgraded costume, walking toward the downtown PRT building. Turns out the Wards were hosted there, instead of at the Protectorate base on the oil rig. Kinda odd, but I guess that made it easier for them to get to it every day without standing out.
It was a pretty nice day today, the snow was melting really fast. Lots of water running in the gutters, making little channels in the slushy snow. Icicles dripping all over the place. Most of it would be gone by March, save for the huge mountains piled up in parking-lot corners.
I get some stares as I walk, but that's to be expected. It's daytime, just an hour after school normally lets out, and I'm fully covered up in what could almost be motorcycle gear, but is a little too costume-ish. I try to walk with confidence. They don't know who I am, I'm a cape, I have power, I can do this!
In addition to the tough but worn leather jacket, thick military boots and sleek teardrop helmet, I have some of the thickest jeans I could find in the men's isle of a discount store. All the better to help with my disguise now that I'm going to be showing myself in the daylight. I have crudely spray painted some wings on the back, as feathered as I could get them, to make it seem like angel wings. That's about as clear of a signal I can do for 'Good Guy Here', as is possible. I also added a little halo around the top of my helmet, in case the subtlety of the wings is lost on anyone.
Scattered under my over-sized clothing is an assortment of thin, armored but flexible guards. Mostly the kind you wear for rollerblading or biking. Knee-pads, elbow, and some arm and shin guards too. I even added some padding to the shoulders of the jacket, although that is more to pretend to be a boy than for safety.
I'm kinda glad that I have a good power for getting around, as it means that I never have to worry about leading someone to my house. It won't matter if anyone tries to follow me back home after this meeting, I can lose them easy unless they are really determined about it and have some speedster on my tail. Maybe that's a bit paranoid, but better safe than sorry!
I glance up at the PRT building up ahead. It's a fair sized steel and glass structure. Reflective windows mirror the bright blue of the sky overhead, helping send beams of sun down to lance the snow.
I need to cross the street to go in. It's about time for the appointment I set up and I don't want to be late. I had made sure that it would be after school so they think I'm still a student, but traffic is jammed from the start of rush-hour and the nearest crossing has a large pool of water under it. Occasionally ripples and splashes are sent up from the cars crossing it.
I'd teleport across but I'm still trying to keep my powers, my existence, a secret from the general public. I want a good solid game plan before I finally let loose, and I still have tons of notes to make, things to test, and exercise to do. At least I know that the PRT won't release info about me to the public until I start to actually do something.
I'll just have to walk around to the farther crossing, I won't be early, but just on time is fine.
When I finally get there, the revolving doors give me easy access. I see various employees in suits hurrying in and out of the building, talking in groups. A team of four PRT officers are on standby, each stationed at a different area of the lobby, outfitted in the best equipment money could buy. All have chain mesh and kevlar vests, helmets that cover their faces, and firearms.
The equipment differed a bit, as two of them had grenade launchers hanging from straps on their shoulders with bandoliers of grenades. The other two had what appeared at first glance to be flame throwers but were probably foam guns. Were they to pull the triggers, they would eject a thick, frothing spray of foam, enough to contain all but the strongest and fastest villains.
In an amusing contrast to this, there is also a gift shop that is thick with kids (who probably came from Arcadia to be here so fast), sporting a selection of action figures, posters, video games and clothing. Four-foot tall pictures of the various Protectorate and Wards team members were placed at regular intervals around the lobby, each backed by bright colors.
There was a cheery guy waiting patiently by the front desk, smiling handsomely at anybody who happened to glance his way. I figured he would be the guy to ask about my appointment. Some kind of receptionist for sure.
I walk up, letting out the breath that I've been holding since I walked in, and ask in a low voice, "I'm here for a tour of the Wards? 4 pm? I'm supposed to tell you I left a message?"
The man blinks, nods at me and says in a surprisingly thin and reedy voice, "Ah yes, 4 pm right on the dot. Right this way sir!"
He leads the way to a small, nicely appointed waiting room, and gestures to a seat. "Your guide will be here shorty."
As he walks back out to the lobby, I look around for entertainment but can't see a single newspaper or even a magazine. The seats are fairly plush and comfortable, the art bland, and I hope I don't have to wait here long since there is nothing to do or read. But not more than half a minute later, in walks Miss Militia. Wow, I was not expecting one of the Protectorate member's to come show me around. Figured I'd get a flunky at most.
She's the type to stand out in almost any crowd, just has this kind of energy around her. She directs what is probably a smile at me, although all I can see is the corners of her eyes crinkling up.
She's wearing a modified military uniform, tight enough to accentuate her curves. She's sporting her usual scarf wrapped around her lower face, with an American flag embroidered on it, and a similar sash around her waist. Her trademark weapon is only a dagger at her side right now, in a simple sheath.
"Hello, I'm Miss Militia and I'll be your guide today."
I get back up to my feet, and nod at her. "Uh, hi. Wow, I didn't think you would be the one showing me around. I didn't think I would get more than maybe a PRT officer... So what's next?" I ask hesitantly.
"Well first we just have to go through a brief security screening to make sure you don't have anything dangerous on you. It is non-invasive and I promise it can't tell us who you are, only if you have weapons on you. Incidentally, it would be best to declare that sort of thing now before we go on. This includes biological and explosive weapons, as well as mundane weapons."
"Nope, nothing like that. Normally I'd have a small knife on me, but I figured it wouldn't be cool to bring it here."
She nods, opens the door that is opposite the one I came in by, and leisurely leads me down a corridor that is very white, and very long. At the end are two more PRT officers. They nod at Miss Militia and one crisply salutes her. "Report is all clear Ma'am. No identifiable hazards."
Oh. I get it, the entire passageway probably had sensors and stuff all behind it, disguised as a really boring hallway. Smart. I could have just ported past, but that would get me foamed and raise alarms. Good thing I'm not a bad-guy. Trying to sneak into this place would be a bad idea.
Miss Militia leads me to a very impressive looking elevator. Interlocking sections of metal unfold and slide apart as we approach, then close behind us. The ride is so smooth that it is nearly impossible to tell that the elevator is moving.
"We are about to visit the Wards main headquarters. This tends to be where they hang out when on duty or on call. Each Ward has quarters here for when they need to sleep after a busy night and can't take the time to go home. Debriefing after missions happens here, along with getting new ones."
She explains as we walk down a long featureless steel corridor. I'm guessing there are more sensors scanning us, seems like a sensible thing to do.
We arrive at a security terminal, and she leans forward to let it scan her eyes. There is a pause after she straightens up again where nothing happens. Not exactly what I was expecting... is it broken?
As if she can sense my confusion, she mentions, "We are just waiting a bit to give them time to get masks on, in case any of them forgot that today was the meeting with you. The red light will turn green when we are good to go."
Ah, I hadn't even noticed the red light as being significant before, just thought it was a power on type indicator.
I notice that Miss Militia seems to be immune to fidgeting as we wait, but her weapon occasionally flashes from one type of weapon to another. Perhaps this is her version of a bored tap of a finger? The little light goes green suddenly, steel doors click, then whisk open with a barely audible whirr. She ushers me inside, her weapon having settled into a rifle of some kind slung across her back.
The room was roughly dome-shaped, but there were sections of wall that looked like they were able to be dismantled and rearranged along various tracks in the floor and ceiling. A series of computers and large monitors were networked at one side of the room, surrounded by over a half-dozen chairs, most filled with Wards. One of the monitors was displaying a big flashing red 0:00, while others were showing camera images of key locations in the city.
All of the Wards were looking at me in obvious curiosity as Miss Militia introduced us. (Not that they needed any introductions, but I suppose it was only polite.)
"Aegis is the current leader, next oldest is Clockblocker, then Gallant." They all nod at me or wave as their names are mentioned.
"Then we have Shadow Stalker, Kid Win, whom you have already met, and Vista." The only one who fails to react is the mysterious Shadow Stalker.
Then she addresses the Wards, "This is a new prospective member, currently no cape name. You guys will be helping us test out his powers in a half-hour, after the meet and greet. I do hope you read the briefing Kid Win gave us? I am here mostly in a supervisory capacity, but I'll leave the rest up to you guys."
Then she steps back and out of the way, leaving me all alone and staring six other capes in the face. I gulp deeply out of sudden nerves.
Gallant immediately lives up to his name, "Hey, lets not just all stare at the new guy. Come on over, take a seat. I promise we don't bite."
I quickly move to do so, at least it will put me in the semi-circle's arc, instead of being the focus of it.
"So..." Asks Clockblocker, "Teleporter huh?"
"Yeah, wanna see?" I offer as I stare briefly at the moving clock imagery on his costume. I think he took his theme a bit too far, but it sure is distracting so maybe it's useful for him.
"Of course! Plus if we see it, we can maybe help you test stuff out better later-on right?" Vista replies with a visible grin. She seems like a bouncy, cheerful kid.
I oblige and make a quick port in front of me, a second self standing up and doing a sort of 'ta-dah' hand gesture. This time I let my sitting self linger for a few seconds before melting it. Then I sit back down in the just vacated chair.
"Woah, hey, you said you teleported, but there were two of you for a bit there!" Kid Win exclaims. "You didn't do that last time!" I can't help but chuckle at how gobsmacked he sounds.
"Yeah, like I told you, I've been busy testing and figuring stuff out. Turns out I can leave a sort of 'afterimage' behind. It doesn't last long though."
I'm kind of proud of this little bit of misdirection. It's true enough, but it makes it seem as if I ported forwards and it's only a temporary illusion or clone left behind. Both are actually the real me, but it's safer if people think that only one is real. I figure I'll let them in on the secret if I decide to join up, along with my real gender and identity.
"Well, Kid Win said you were having trouble coming up with a cape name, how about Afterimage?" Aegis suggests with a casual shrug, showing off his impressive muscles.
"I actually was seriously thinking about it, but then some cape in the UK took it, literally a day before I met Kid Win. Talk about heartbreaking." I groan playfully.
"Ooch, that does suck." Vista wrinkles up her nose in sympathy.
"Oh boo-hoo, who cares what name message boy picks? He might not even get to keep it in the end." Shadow Stalker finally stopped lounging around looking disinterested long enough to direct this caustic remark at me, wow. What kind of bug crawled up her ass and died?
Aegis tries to calm her down with a low, soothing tone. "Hey, it's not his fault that the higher ups decided that you needed a bit of a more 'family friendly re-branding'."
"In a week she's getting re-branded as 'Myst Shadow'." Clockblocker gleefully whispers to me in a fake and loud whisper from behind his hand. "She was really insistent on keeping the 'Shadow' part, but they wanted to ditch the Stalker bit, said it sent the 'wrong message'. Needless to say, she is getting a whole new, less scary costume to go with it and is not pleased."
Shadow Stalker (soon to be Myst Shadow), just crosses her arms and sulks, ignoring this gossip. I can almost feel the anger radiating off her. I'm sure Gallant (who is supposed to be able to read emotions off of nearby people), can probably taste it, it's so thick.
"Sooo..." Vista nervously tries to change the subject. "Do you want to know anything about the Wards program? They said you were only considering joining?"
"Yeah, I want to keep my options open for now. I already know the basics of it, I did my research. The Wards program has lots of benefits, but also lots of problems." I shrug and leave it at that.
They probably don't want me to get into how the Protectorate seems sometimes more concerned about image, and less about stopping villains... Especially after that little bit of anger at 're-branding' from Shadow Stalker.
"Ok, we can talk about that later then, maybe after we've shown you how cool our power testing facility is?" Gallant offers with a smile. It's pretty much the only part of his face that can be seen, but at least its a nice smile. I wonder briefly if he practices it in a mirror.
"What other stuff can you do? Any current limits so far? Just so we don't duplicate anything you have already tested..." He trails off expectantly.
Right, time to get down to business, "Ok, so I think I have a mass limit, no more than 120lb, or thereabouts. It includes my costume too. So realistically its more like 110lb. I only have to touch it to be able to take it with me, and I can leave up to 3 afterimages at once, if I teleport fast enough. I can choose not to leave them behind too. They aren't good for much yet, but they do carry out actions that I was about to do, or want them to do, for the few seconds until they melt into ash."
I shrug at them, and shift nervously on my chair. All this attention is starting to creep me out a bit, no doubt leftover hangups from school, when the only attention I got was the bad kind.
"Oh and so far, everything is just line of sight only. It's one reason why I'll be happy to test things with you, to see if there are ways of extending my range. I know its kinda short range compared to some teleporters who can go anywhere they have been before, so I'm hoping I can extend it with some tinker-tech."
"Oh, I can probably help you test that!" Kid Win replies with a bit of excitement.
"I'm also kinda curious about momentum and injurys, and plan to test that here too since I'm sure you have stuff I can use safely. Otherwise I would have had to try some tricky and dangerous experiments alone. I figure better to do it when I have people who can stop me from getting hurt too badly if it goes wrong. But no other powers that I know of."
As I finish my summary I see that most of them are serious, paying attention to me.
Vista is biting her bottom lip as she thinks about what I have said and is clearly trying to come up with something new to test. Clockblocker is scratching his head, but he was nodding along as I explained so he probably just has no ideas that I haven't already covered.
Kid Win is hard to read since he has a full face helmet, but sounded excited a second ago. Gallant seems to have had an idea since his body posture seems eager and slightly more energetic than before the summary. Shadow Stalker hasn't moved except to shake her head and sigh. She seems like a real downer, an instigator of the kind of drama I was hoping to avoid.
After a few seconds where no-one speaks up, Gallant clears his throat and offers up his suggestion, "My idea is, what happens if we, aka Clockblocker, time-freeze an afterimage? It probably won't tell us much, but it could prove interesting. Power interactions are always neat to explore."
"Oooh, lets try it! We don't even have to go down to the exercise room for this one!" Clockblocker at least seems enthusiastic about the idea, and from what I know of his power, it can't possibly hurt me. The wiki on him says that he can basically freeze people in time for a few minutes, and nothing can affect them until they unfreeze again.
"Ok," I nod, "lets try it."
Unfortunately Shadow Stalker sees fit to interrupt just as I'm about to do it. "Really? What's the Frikking point? Messenger boy is useless! He can't move people around, he looks like a beanpole so he can't fight worth a damn. All he can do is teleport into the waiting arms of an enemy and die. Horribly. Probably the most useless teleporter I've ever heard of. All he'd be good for is delivering packages."
She snorts with derision, "Heh, Messenger... That's all you are. Maybe you should give up this notion of fighting villains and go home, get a job with FedEx."
I wish that she could see my glare right now, but I'm not going to show her my face just to make my displeasure known. Instead I ignore her and cascade out my full array of selves, finding with surprise that I am almost able to make a fifth. I'm closer than I've ever gotten before. Maybe anger or adrenaline helps? I had been trying meditation and calmness, but perhaps I needed the opposite...
I focus on the experiment and create my selves to be all near Clockblocker, save for the last one created whom they all think is the real me. He is surprised, still looking at Shadow Stalker in what looks like shock at the outburst, but reaches out and touches one of my selves. It disappears from my awareness as it freezes into place, but I don't feel as if I could replace it, it's still somehow there.
I take the time to now focus on Shadow Stalker, in the last second before I have to start forcibly dissolving my oldest selves. (I'm keeping the exact duration a secret for now.) I want to know why she is being so hostile since I don't want to have a hero as an enemy, and I really don't think my powers are that bad. I rapidly come to a startling conclusion. But... That can't be right?! There's no way that... Sophia?
The tone, the voice, the body posture, the same meanness of spirit.
Sophia.
No no no nononononono... That is part of my old life. That's a school problem. I don't have school anymore, so it should no longer be a problem! How did she manage to somehow beat me here?! No, I'm thinking irrationally, emotionally, I need the calm of the wave, of the balance. I quickly cascade again, only three selves now since the fourth is still time locked.
Clarity.
I can see Gallant starting to get upset, worried, in the second that has passed since I figured it out. The others are just staring at me in confusion as it looks like I'm just teleporting randomly now. No doubt Gallant has picked up on my spike in emotions.
Crap. I'm trapped. I can't just leave. There are no windows, and I'm deep underground.
Trapped.
Panic.
Ok, so Sophia is Shadow Stalker. A cape. Somehow the PRT is too incompetent to notice that a Ward is bullying other students, to the point of helping shove one in a locker... I shudder involuntarily with all my selves. That locker... No, focus!
Focus.
Maybe the PRT knows about it, but decided that they have to keep their pet hero happy, sacrifice one or two normal kids on the altar of 'it's just a prank' or 'there is no evidence'?
Fuck!
No wonder nobody at school ever paid attention. The office assistance shredding my complaints. Teachers like Mr. Gladly ignoring the comments made in their hearing. The principal saying that they could only help pay medical bills but there is was no evidence pointing to any perpetrators, despite plenty of kids being there and seeing it happen. It was at the very least assault and attempted murder, or at least manslaughter. I had looked it up later. Only my new powers kept me from dying.
The school knew, or at least enough of them knew, that she was a Ward. So they hid her crimes, made sure I couldn't get anywhere with my complaints.
Anger.
Cascading out again to extend the time I have to think about this, while not giving away how long my selves last, because fuck giving her any more information about me. I can't join the Wards. Not now.
It was a possibility before, but I'd rather die first now that I know. I want to die. To curl up in a ball and give up.
No, I have to endure, to survive.
If she wasn't here, I would have eventually given in to the lure of teamwork and tinker-tech, but the PRT is clearly too corrupt. I don't even hate Sophia as much as Emma. Emma is the one who truly betrayed me, Sophia is just a bully. But this is too far.
Determination.
I stop teleporting around and give them my undivided attention just as Gallant finishes asking me, "Uh, dude, whats wrong? You ok?"
"What is wrong is that I figured out who she is," I point right at Shadow Stalker, "and as such, I cannot believe that you would accept a bully and an accessory to assault and attempted murder."
They all look very taken aback at this statement, neither confirming nor disproving my suspicions that they knew about her 'activities'. It's hard to get a read on them with only one self, but I don't want to do anything threatening now that I'm claiming to know a secret identity.
This is a dangerous, dangerous game I'm playing. This is only confirmed as Miss Militia who had been silent up till now steps up behind me and asks in a quietly but absolutely scary way, "Explain."
"I know who Shadow Stalker is. As much as I am tempted, I won't tell anyone. Even I know that you don't go around exposing secret identities without consequences. But I cannot even think about joining a team that has her on it."
I force the words out, my voice growing hoarse as I hold back tears.
"She has spent the past year and a half bullying this girl called Taylor at school mercilessly, along with two other girls. It culminated in Taylor being shoved in a locker, one filled with used tampons, pads, and other assorted filth."
I practically spit that last word, briefly losing control of my attempts at blocking out my emotions.
"Taylor almost died. She would have died if I had not let her out of the locker when no-one was looking. After I realized that no-one else was going to. That is one of the reasons why I want to be a hero, to stop people like her. I can't be on the same team as her. Either the PRT knows about this and does not care, or it's too incompetent to know what its Wards get up to. Either way, I do not want to be a part of this organization."
I take a deep breath in and get a hold of myself, trying to not break down as I turn to Miss Militia and tell her, "I want to leave now, so please let me out."
I had focused on describing things as if I was not the victim, as just another bystander. It's the only way I could think of to distance myself from the pain and emotions, enough to hopefully not have a complete meltdown in front of them. Although that wouldn't help much against the emotion sensor. It seems to be working so far, distancing myself from the nausea welling up inside me.
"Oh please..." Shadow Stalker speaks up, voice dangerously low. "You don't honestly believe this nameless beanpole? It's clear that you must be one of my rejected suitors. You probably got all worked up over asking me out, only to get rejected. Heart broken, crushed, and stomped. Now you want to get revenge on me for turning you down for a date? Pathetic. How could you use poor Taylor's horrible attack against me like this? It's beyond pathetic." Her tone is wounded, but to me it just sounds mocking.
When I don't react to her, or try to defend myself from her lies, she gets even angrier for some reason.
"I am a great hero," She practically snarls, "much better than you ever will be, and you are just jealous. You just want to knock me down a peg. Well good luck with that. I'm a Ward. Without any proof of your baseless accusations, there is no way they will get rid of me. Plan failed, loser."
She turns and stalks away, leaving behind her teammates in various unreadable emotional states. Makes me briefly wish I had Gallant's powers. I look at Miss Militia again. I dully repeat, "I want to go now. Please let me out. I don't want to talk about this any more."
I'm trying to stay calm, rational, trying to feel the wave without actually cascading, but it's not working. As I see her hesitate, not moving toward the door, I cascade again, all selves letting out a strangled sounding, "Let me out!"
I'm starting to feel sick and claustrophobic. To think that I came in here, trusted them a bit, even told them about some of my power's limits. Trusting that the authorities would actually help me a bit, if only because it was in their best interests to do so. Big mistake apparently.
The walls partitioning the different areas of my life were crashing down, all because one of my bullies was a cape. A hero, I think with all the sarcasm I can muster. That circle of hell, one I thought I had left behind, that I had out-endured, that I had survived, it now was firmly re-established right around the Wards.
Gallant must have sensed something in my emotions, or that last cascade scared him into action, because he literally flew to the door, one hand raised up to stop Miss Milita from doing anything. It opens after a brief scan of his face, despite his eyes being covered by his helmet, and then he is moving down the hallway at a fast pace.
I resent him coming with me in the elevator, not giving me space, but it probably would not work if I wasn't accompanied by someone official. He presses a button and up we go. I'm determinedly ignoring him, trying to breath deeply and evenly, trying not to feel trapped in the small elevator.
The door opens, unfolding in its strange way. I don't see the previous boring security room, instead I see a few large offices up ahead, with glass partitions dividing them and big clear windows with a view of downtown. I breathe out, some tension bleeding out of my shoulders slightly. I'm out.
Gallant tells my left behind self, "I'm sorry." There is a long pause, "I thought this might be a faster way for you to leave than going through security again."
I nod at him, then that self dissolves into ash.
One minute and thirty-four seconds after I'm gone, the self time-locked in the Wards headquarters unfreezes and I almost lose it, but quickly manage to balance the wave out of reflex. I keep that self as still as possible, listening in, because it turns out that there is a bit of a heated discussion going on. I can only catch a few seconds before that self runs up against the time limit.
Since I don't want to be back in there again I let it dissolve, but not before hearing Vista midway through a sentence, "-absolutely disgusting, I can't believe-"
Kid Win cutting her off, "Much more believable than the idea that some random cape would lie for no reason."
"I refuse to patrol with her anymore." Clockblocker folding his arms angrily.
"Look," An exasperated Miss Militia interjects, "We have no proof. We only have one persons word. We cannot do a-"
And that's it, time up. I wonder what they did when my frozen self abruptly dissolved in the middle of the argument. It's clear they had forgotten about it. Probably for the best that they think it's just a mindless clone acting out the last few seconds of my intended actions.
I'm busy teleporting straight to the ship graveyard when this happens, where I can be sure that no-one will bother me. I need to be alone. I need space, lots of space.
Not even villains claim this area as territory, they only care about the warehouses and docks nearby. Although to be fair, not many would think about a big pile of half submerged boats and shipping containers as 'territory', due to the difficulties of getting out there to claim it in the first place.
The good news is that it looks like most of the Wards didn't know about their little bully problem. That makes me feel better about my judgement, as I had started to like them in the brief time I had spent with them. The bad news? I'm freaking pissed off, and there went my best chance at being a hero.
Fuck.
I'm starting to like this word. I never used to swear much, but it seems like life is conspiring to give me situations where it's the only word that is appropriate. I'm Fucked. Fuck them. Fuck her.
I teleport out to a big pile of tangled ships, rusted sides gaping open. Suddenly I'm on the deck of one of the nicer looking ones, one of the few that is actually rather level, and not wildly askew.
I finally let all this anger, this hate, bubble up and spew out in a scream. I shout it to the ocean. I curse the PRT, governments and authorities in general. I rail at the twists of fate that leads to a mortal enemy and villain being given a favored place at the heroes table. (Not in such elegant terms of course, there is rather a lot more swearing involved.)
I kick the rails of the ship with cascaded selves, reveling in the brief busts of pain, having no fear of actually breaking my foot. I throw a proper tantrum, out here in the middle of no-where. Where absolutely nobody can see or hear me.
Then I finally wind down and stop, my voice hoarse. Tears are running down my face, but are thankfully hidden by my helmet. I slump to the deck, spent, and feeling a bit better.
I hear a footstep behind me as someone steps up from the stairs leading below, and a man's voice calling out tentatively, in rich deep tones, "Uh, you alright there?"
Shit.
~~~~~~~~~~~
AN: I read today in a WoG post that Wildbow actually made up a list of characters in the first Endbringer fight, and then rolled randomly to see who would die to Leviathan. Neat huh? Apparently he even had a backup main character ready for if Taylor herself died.
I plan on keeping the Leviathan attack and the bombing chaos that leads up to it, solely because that also causes lots of other deliciously painful chaos like the S9 and such to visit town.
So I think that I'm going to emulate Wildbow, and Leviathan will also have random deaths generated for all the characters. So instead of the cannon list of deaths, it will be all new ones! (Because by then, Taylor's actions will have rippled out enough to make it so that some changes are in order.)
Anyways, got some good questions in the reviews on , so I thought I'd answer them here so anyone else wondering the same thing can read it...
First off, Roanoak asked: If two Taylor clones tried to teleport together would their carry capacity be doubled?
Answer: I'm afraid not. Each self can split off another self in its line of sight, until there are too many selves and her limit is reached. But two of them doing it at the same time just makes two more, each carrying whatever it was carrying. Then in the end, only one gets to keep on being real.
This means that if two of them hold onto a heavy table and they both port another self, then both new ones don't have any part of a table, because it was too heavy for either one to have.
I had to decide upon this early on, since otherwise it opens up the possibility of both porting half of a person. Then once the other clone/selves melt into ash, so would half of the person, whichever half was being 'held' by the clone that melted away into ash. This is horrifying, and a very unintended use of her power.
Second question, Lendary had a rather long message, but to paraphrase, it was basically "OMG, Taylor can copy people? Broken power?!"
Answer: Nope! I can see why you are worried, but don't be. Don't forget, Oni Lee could also transport organic material, as Skitters bugs were able to be duplicated by him, and that is how she sensed where he was a few times in the original story. So I'm not totally twisting his power too much.
Plus, I made sure to give her a strict enough mass limit that she'll never be able to teleport anyone big. Very few people are lighter than her, and she'll never be able to get super massive unless she convinces some bio-tinker like Panacea to totally twist and warp her. Basically, she can rescue small children, people with dwarfism, and pets.
Lastly, I haven't had her actually try to port with another person yet, but when she does, you will find out quickly why it won't mean an easy OP duplication of any other capes powers.
About the best case scenario? Eidolon could use one power to make himself smaller in mass to make this possible, or to increase her mass somehow. Then he needs to use his second power to deal with the side-effects of her duplication, since her brain is configured to be able to handle it, his is not. Leaving him one power to actually use, duplicated.
So he can be ported around by her, using one power up to 4-5 times, but each self gets cut off every 5 seconds, so no lingering effects are possible. Honestly, he could just get a mover power himself, maybe something to let him split into two, and then the third blasty power, and he'd be better off, not having to rely on someone else's reactions and sense of timing.
Last edited: Oct 28, 2016
95
Stillwind11
Dec 30, 2015
View discussion
Threadmarks Stamp 1-8
View content
Stillwind11
Stillwind11
Dec 30, 2015
#8
Stamp 1-8
Shit!
I freeze in place, completely and utterly shocked that someone was out here in the middle of nowhere. What's worse, they had just witnessed my tantrum. Spinning out a cascade of selves so that they are farther away from him and looking in his direction, I take a good look at the man who has caught me at such a crappy moment.
It's an incredibly well muscled guy, broad shouldered and tall. He is wearing completely ordinary clothes with one exception. The ordinary part is the baggy grey sweatpants, some thin gloves for the cold, and a ragged t-shirt that has a faded picture of some cartoon orange fish on it and the words 'Once I evolve, I'm going to kill you all!'. (Not a good sign, that t-shirt.)
Then topping it all off is a simple white cloth mask that covers his entire face save for two holes that reveal icy blue eyes. A mask means he's a cape, and thus more dangerous than some random guy living on a boat. Next I notice that he has one gloved hand out in a calming gesture towards me, but the other is hidden behind his back, holding some kind of short sword. I wouldn't have been able to see it from my first position, but two of my cascaded selves can see enough from different angles to fill in the picture.
He takes a step back and his eyes widen as he regards my cascaded selves. Unfortunately for him, it seems like he forgot that the stairs started right behind him, as he finds only air behind his foot. He has to quickly reach out to the railing with both hands to stop his fall, ruining his dramatic entrance and appearance quite a bit. He also reveals his weapon more clearly as it clangs against the metal railing in his haste not to fall backwards, looking kinda like one of those European medieval style weapons.
The absurdity of it all forces a bit of a chuckle out of me, and I melt them all save for the last one I made. Now I'm standing, facing him a safe distance away. Hopefully I'm far enough away that he can't lunge at me before I can teleport out.
I figure any cape who is that clumsy or forgetful, is probably not one who will (or can) instantly kill me and all my selves. However as a safety precaution and to enhance my thinking, I decide to constantly send out a self to a far off point in the distance every five seconds. I pick a crazily leaning crows-nest type structure on one large ship at the limits of my vision, figuring that it is far enough away that it will be safe, and more importantly, unseen by this guy.
So now that I feel safer, I am free to indulge my curiosity about what the heck some random cape is doing out here, plus I'm still feeling crappy, vulnerable, and emotional. I need to take my frustrations out on something, and who better than the guy who's interrupted me? "What are you doing here? How did you even get out here?" I angrily ask him.
"Well, I was working out downstairs, when all of a sudden I heard what sounded like a hoard of people attacking my ship and each-other. Kinda figured that I ought to come take a look at what the heck was going on. I'd ask how you got here, but I'm guessing teleportation after that little trick of yours?"
"Oh, yeah, uh, sorry. I thought no-one would be out in the ship graveyard, I didn't know this ship was claimed by somebody. Sorry." I feel a bit sheepish now, I probably had given this guy a heart attack. Maybe he lived here? Hmm, but he didn't answer my question about how he got here, possibly on purpose. Still, I'm the one in the wrong here, not him. I should be less angry, even if he caught me at a bad time.
"So, kid, please tell me that your little, uh, 'frustration release exercise', didn't involve any light-shows or big displays that might make people come out here and investigate this ship?"
Oh, he's worried that I'll lead someone to his gym? It's a reasonable question to ask, he must be keeping a low profile as a cape since I don't immediately recognize him. Of course, him being in workout clothing instead of a costume might be disguising the fact that he could actually be well-known.
"No, I was just yelling and kicking things. Nothing that would let people find you and your ship. Uh, what were you going to do with that sword?" I eye it suspiciously, then realize that once again, my helmet means no visible facial expressions. I'm really starting to dislike this thing.
He glances at the sword surprised, as if he had already forgotten about it. "Oh, well... probably try to stab anything that attacked me. Or run away. Depends on what I found."
He lets out a deep rumbling laugh and shrugs, then deliberately puts the sword on the ground beside him. "That help? Sorry for the pointy welcome, but it never hurts to be careful these days."
I shrug, as he has a point, "That's ok..."
I decide to get a bit bolder, curiosity overcoming my embarrassment and frustration. "So... You workout on a derelict ship in the middle of a boat graveyard huh? Seems to be working pretty well for you, or are those muscles from your power?"
"Nope, all pure hard work right here. I actually have a pretty sweet gym setup down here, it's gonna be a pain to have to move it all." He sighs with disappointment.
"Wait, why do you have to move it?"
"Duh kid, you know where I am, where it is. Unless you want to team up and start working out with me, I'd rather move it to a fallback position." He says half sarcastically.
I feel a bit dumb now, it's my fault he has to move things and I didn't even realize it despite having an extra self up. He's been rather reasonable so far about having a random cape invade his life. "Crap, sorry. I don't suppose it would help if I promised not to tell anyone? We could let you use the excuse that I don't want you to tell anyone about my tantrum? Prime blackmail material right there."
I am only half joking, knowing in my heart that unless he turns out to be a seriously nasty cape with a kill-order on him, I don't intend to reveal his location to anyone else. It's just a secret gym, hardly a den of evil. Plus it feels like it would be a bit too close to revealing his civilian identity.
From the online research I've done while in super-study mode, I've come to the conclusion that secret identities don't actually get revealed that often, despite the abundance of capes out there who could easily figure out who people are behind a mask.
I figure that there must be something holding them back from it, likely because if one cape gets their identity revealed, they have no reason to hold back anymore from revealing secrets they might know. I suppose it's lucky that I have a way to boost my ability to think, I don't think I've have noticed the subtleties and odd coincidences surrounding this unspoken cape stuff otherwise.
He seems to study me for a bit, then nods. "Yeah, ok. I don't want to have to move shit around, and your tantrum was pretty revealing. Got problems with the PRT huh? I know exactly how it feels to have them screw you over."
Huh, he sounds really sympathetic when he says that. Of course it also means he probably is not a hero, you have to be on the PRT's good side to be an independent hero. So... I might be talking to a villain. And to think that this day had started out so well...
He continues with another shrug, "If you want to talk about it, we can share stories about how crappy they can be. But it's cool if you don't, tis a touchy subject. Since you do know about this place now, if you want to use the equipment you can I guess. It won't hurt it. Just uh, knock before coming down so I have time to get my mask on if I'm here, ok?"
Wow. For a possible villain, this guy is pretty chill. Very much a live and let live type. But I actually could use a secret gym, so surprisingly enough I kinda want to take him up on his offer. It's not like I'm going to be helping him commit any crimes. It's just exercise, I justify to myself, knowing that there will be a catch, that it won't work out anyways.
"I uh, don't really now how to use stuff like that, what do I do if I break anything? How do I even use the equipment?" I'm still curious about this guy and want to at least find out his cape name before I go, asking him more questions seems to be a good way to get him talking.
He nods at me approvingly, "I'll show you the basics right now if you have time. Uh, I feel odd calling you kid all the time, you aren't that much younger than me. Makes me feel like I'm suddenly old. You have a cape name?"
"Not yet," I grumble. "I'm having trouble picking something I like."
"Well, I know it's taken, but I'll call ya Ash for now, unless you have objections? It's cus of that beautiful ash dissolve thing your duplicates did back there, looked like a dream almost."
"Sure, it beats kid." I tentatively follow him down the stairway, looking back occasionally to secretly send out a self to a safe position in view. I still don't quite trust this guy and now would be a good time to ambush me.
Once I go down the stairs halfway, I can see that the level below is a wide open space created by cutting down some of the metal walls, filled with exercise equipment and actual working lights strung up along the ceiling, wires leading off to somewhere in the dark.
"Light switch is here. Make sure to turn it off when you are done, cus the solar panels are crappy and only store so much power for the lights. Don't want to drain them by leaving it on overnight. Nothing else in here is electronic so no fancy exercise bike that beeps at you I'm afraid."
He's right about that. Looking around it all seems like stuff built by hand, with only a few professional looking things that you'd expect to find in a gym. There is a bike that has been bolted to a heavy metal frame, lifting it off its wheels and doing something to the gear chain. Pulleys, ropes, and metal bars with heavy things attached to the ends are scattered about. It looks daunting, but also kinda sad and homemade. I decide that even if this guy is a villain, it can't be for one of the big nasty gangs like the ABB, Merchants or E88. They would have much better stuff for one of their capes to use.
I stop making selves behind me as he starts to talk about the equipment, since I can't see up the stairs anymore. I start putting them inside the room instead. Mostly positioned around the room at random. He starts to explain how to use everything, but hesitates a bit when he sees the first set of selves. But since I don't do anything with them, he seems to accept that it's just a thing that I'm going to be doing, and moves on.
I keep bouncing around the room, making selves, always keeping track of which one is the last self made. It could prove important if I have to suddenly run or something, and I don't want to let him get a good idea of how my power works. He already knows I can teleport and make more of myself from my panicked reaction up on deck, but no reason to let more slip unless needed. Although I can see that keeping the true extent of my powers secret is going to be much harder than I thought it would be, when I first came up with the plan. Might have to revise my plans a bit.
I relax after a few minutes. It's nice that he isn't demanding anything from me, no power explanations, not why I'm so pissed off at the PRT. The offer to listen is there, and the offer to help has been made, but he is just letting it hang there, moving on to other things.
It reminds me a bit of my dad, the unspoken implications, the hesitancy to push. He likes cracking jokes, mostly wordplay stuff. He's pretty clever with it and I try to keep up, slinging them back at him. It's kinda fun.
It's interesting to note that every bit of equipment that uses weights, has very low starting weights set aside in a neat row of increasing weight, covered in dust. Since even the weights seem mostly homemade from random lumps of metal melted down into shapeless blobs, it means that he made them at some point and was once just as weak as me. Obviously since I'm not a guy I will never get that massive, but at least I know the equipment works despite its appearance.
This guy seems to know all the techniques, sounding like an expert as he takes me from one machine to the next. It's taking long enough that I drop down to only having two selves up since I don't want to exhaust myself and be unable to get home. Still, I should be able to remember most of it, if I come back. Not too sure if I will, but it's not like I have many options right now. Still waiting for the catch however.
Once he is done explaining everything he seems to come to a decision, his body posture changing to be less sure of himself. "Hey, so I do have to admit, there might be a teeny bit of an ulterior motive here."
Great, I knew it. Now is when he asks me to commit crimes with him.
"So Ash, your power looks kinda cool, very useful for a project that me and a buddy are working on. Having a bunch of duplicates running around would simplify things a lot. I also happened to notice that your costume looks a bit... homemade. Simple. Lacking in some frills if you will."
Here it comes, the pitch I'll have to turn down, making me burn another bridge. Why couldn't he have just stuck to being the friendly anonymous workout buddy? I could have done that, despite my suspicions of him. It was kinda nice to actually talk and banter with another person for once. Plus it was way less stressful than trying to talk to the Wards, since it was just me and him, no crowd. Not to mention that he seems much more wary of me, than I am of him. Probably lacked a good power for fleeing trouble or fighting, if that sword was the best thing he had.
"So uh, this has no bearing on you being able to use the gym, you can always come back as long as you don't nark. But if you don't mind being on camera and letting me beat up some of your duplicates, then I can get you a much better costume, something way safer than a leather jacket and jeans."
Wait, what? He just wants to beat up my duplicates, on camera? Huh? I was prepared for most things, but not for a task that seems completely legal and harmless. I decide to express this confusion in a very coherent manner.
"Huh?"
He lets out another rich, rumbling chuckle, "Ok, so we need a bunch of ninjas to beat up for a short movie, I figure if we dress you up like one, then have you popping in duplicates like crazy, I can cut em down, beat them up, and so on. We can do some editing tricks to make sure that the ash dissolve is never visible, so that if you later want to go do stuff with some cape team, you can pretend you never helped us since it might ruin your reputation."
Reputation? So he's definitely got an unsavory reputation then, villain for sure. Although I'm not sure why a villain would want to make a short movie about ninjas, so the sheer oddity of the idea keeps me here, listening and not running away.
"This will be way cheaper and easier than hiring random extras, plus going out to fight ABB gang members won't work since they don't wear ninja outfits, and they definitely don't take direction very well. Costumes are pretty easy for us to provide, so it's a good trade from what I can see. Unless something bad happens to you if a duplicate is hurt or killed?"
"Wait, so you just want to film yourself fighting ninjas? And I'll get a real, actual, professionally made costume somehow? No offense but you don't look like you can get your hands on good costumes easily." I say eyeing him up and down.
"Oh, you don't know who I am. I get it. I guess I am kinda out of costume right now." He holds out his hand for a handshake, "Yo Ash, I'm the amazing Uber!" He proclaims this with a very dramatic tone, one that had been absent from our interactions so far. But he turns it off almost right after, with a simple, "Pleasure to meet you."
As I try to process this, Uber explains, "Leet and I have a costume making machine, it's one of the first things he ever built. Makes everything from disposable one use outfits, to really nice high quality custom items that are lined with some special, secret Tinker fabric. It is all still fibers of course, so nothing we make will ever be as good as proper Tinker armor like Kid Win, Gallant, or Armsmaster have. But it's the best cloth based stuff you can probably get. How else do you think we managed to have a costume for every occasion, for every show?"
I hastily re-arrange my thoughts, cascading out to a full four selves. Uber, and Leet. Jokes. Villains.
They had a webpage that streamed their costumed activities. Lots of clips found there way to YouTube as well. I could admit I had watched the show myself a couple of times. They had this little flying camera that I thought of as the 'snitch' that recorded everything they did in costume. I briefly check to make sure that it isn't here now, but the coast looks clear.
Each time I'd tuned in, I had been surprised to see there were thousands of viewers. I'd stopped because it wasn't feel-good watching. They were real underdogs, struggling to succeed, which made you feel sorry for them, made you want to root for them, until they did something despicable. Then you found yourself looking at them in a negative light, looking down on them, cheering whenever they failed. It felt a little too much like I'd been looking at them in the same way Emma, Madison and Sophia looked at me, and that had been a major turn-off.
Their entire shtick was a video game theme. With every escapade, they picked a different video game or series, designing their costumes and crimes around it. One day it would be Leet in a Mario costume throwing fireballs while Uber was dressed up as Bowser, the two of them breaking into a mint to collect 'coins'. Then a week later, they would have a Grand Theft Auto theme and they would be driving through the city in a souped up car, leading the cops and PRT on a wild chase.
Uber was an expert at anything he wanted to be. No doubt that was why he had seemed like such an expert at workout techniques, it was his power. It meant that if he had thought I was a threat up there, he would have gone from dorky weightlifter holding a sword clumsily, to an expert in sword fighting. It wasn't much of a power compared to stopping time or altering the fabric of reality, but he was an incredibly versatile cape within normal human limits.
Leet could make anything. He was a Tinker and normally would be hounded by offers and threats till he joined up with a hero or villain team, but his power had a major drawback. If he built something too similar to something he had already made, it had a high chance of failing. It was a drawback that was obvious enough in all the videos where something had failed. No cape would easily trust something he built, making him immune to the normal power plays that occurred around Tinkers. Explosions were common, and Uber probably only survived some of the mishaps due to incredible luck, or possibly the really tough costumes he had mentioned.
All of this meant that it was a legitimate offer, that they probably did have a real use for me as nothing more than an expendable extra for a show. It was probably not going to be one of their live stream shows since he had mentioned editing, but they did do the occasional mini movie centered around a specific video game character.
The problem was that they were villains, laughingstocks. While mostly harmless, they still did some bad things on occasion. I deliberately don't take Uber's hand, there is no way I'm shaking it. I can't support the kinds of stuff he's done, will do in the future.
I want to know why someone can think that it's ok to rob banks, to attack random civilians, and destroy stuff just for fun. I want to make things better in this city, to help get rid of the gangs, not cause mayhem.
So I cross my arms and ask him angrily, challenging him, "How can you justify doing some of the horrible things you do? How can you live with yourself? I mean sure, some of your shows, your antics, are harmless. Some even help people, like that time you guys went around as RoboCops and stopped crime for a day. But most of the time it's just stealing things and fighting people. You've even killed people! There is no way that I'm helping you two do anything."
He seems to shrink in on himself a bit, withdrawing his hand, posture no longer perfect. "Look, you don't understand, we don't have a choice. We never wanted to hurt anyone, let alone kill!" His impassioned plea is so heartfelt that I decide to let him try to explain before leaving. The guy I met today doesn't match the guy I've seen online, I don't want to jump to conclusions just yet.
"Look, at first we were going to be rogues, independent. We wanted to have fun showing off video game stuff, make some money, and not worry about fighting crime. We kinda thought that we might become heroes one day, if we got bored of the video game thing. Leet had just gotten his power and was making all sorts of stuff, trying to figure out what his specialty was."
Taking a moment to gather himself, he sits on the bike seat, looking down at his feet as he talks. His voice is mesmerizing, like all the best story tellers. I want to be angry at this use of his power, but it's just a voice trick. A pretty harmless one, given that I can see through it easily. Possibly it's subconscious. Either way, having multiple selves up for this conversation should let me see through any bullshit.
"That was the problem in the end. By the time we figured it out, it was too late. Whole swaths of possible future inventions were now too risky, they would probably backfire. We had first done tons of robotics, hard light projections, and even some bio tinkering, all in the name of video games. We made robot minions to fight in choreographed scenes, stuff to project backgrounds and objects, even pets. Chocobos and Pokemon mostly. Sold em off to the highest bidder, cus at the time we figured we could make more easily."
He shrugs as his hands make a throwing away gesture, "Then failures started to happen. And by the time we figured it out, someone had died in a backlash. We never, ever meant for that to happen."
He looks at one of my selves, a haunted look in his eyes, tension in every muscle. I believe him, that he didn't want anyone to die. Whatever else I think of him, I can't think of him as a cold-blooded murderer.
"But the PRT didn't care. They had already been pissed off that Leet kept turning down offers to join. So when someone died, they called us villains. They said we were no longer rogues, and that if we didn't join up that instant, we would be thrown in jail. I looked into it, put on my researcher hat, and found out that if we joined now that the accident had occurred, we'd be probationary members of the Protectorate for years. Subject to even more rules and red-tape than the normal guys are. We'd be relocated, separated, and chances were that we'd have to do horrible jobs like patrol Simurgh exclusion zones forever."
I can't help but shudder at that thought. Any place that the Simurgh had touched, had warped, I wouldn't want to hang around it for long either.
"We talked about it for days, arguing every possible angle. In the end we decided that we were best friends, and there was no way we would let ourselves get separated, not for a crap job like that. We went to jail at first, we figured we deserved it for the accident. Given how overcrowded jails are these days, we figured we'd be out in a year or less on good behavior."
I interrupt, shocked, "Wait, you guys actually went to jail? Willingly?"
"Yup. Its all public record if you want to go check too. But it didn't go so well. We don't know if that was on purpose or not, but Leet had a hard time with it. Apparently something in Tinkers drives them to keep on inventing, innovating. He was not allowed to in prison, despite the fact that they really should have allowed for it, they knew full well how Tinkers worked. I know other Tinkers in other prisons get workshop time, then have the invention taken away at the end of it. So when Leet innovated some small harmless thing, it would get found, confiscated, and he'd get another mark on his record. Then they'd remind him that he could Tinker all he wanted in the PRT."
"That's actually pretty cruel then, just the sort of underhanded trick I'd expect from them, now that I know how they really are."
"Yeah, they'll do anything to recruit people. I had to keep getting into fights to protect Leet, since he's a bit of an asshole when stressed, and very out of shape. Was completely unable to function in there. It was getting bad, so I broke us out. He'd have been killed by someone he pissed off if we hadn't, or else he would have killed himself with a backlash, or in some other way."
He sighs and looks down again, rubbing his forehead briefly with his hand, then getting up to pace around.
"So after that, we were villains no matter what we did. Most our money had been confiscated or stolen by looters, we had almost no inventions left save for what we had hidden really, really well. So yes, we started to commit crimes. We had to take mercenary jobs to get money and supplies. We robbed places that we knew could easily take it, like banks and mints. We did our usual shows for subscribers, for the ad revenue."
I frown behind my helmet, but I don't interrupt. I already knew they went down a darker path after breaking out of jail for the first time.
"Heck, just to make sure that people would stop bugging us about Leet joining them, we even leaked his big weakness and made sure to have plenty of live videos with explosions and backfires just to drive the point home. We deliberately turned ourselves into jokes to protect ourselves. And it sucks every time we get laughed at, called names, or ignored."
His fists clench unconsciously, tension in his shoulders and arms as he continues pacing.
"We try not to hurt people, but it gets harder and harder to do that these days. It just seems to be getting out of control. The backfires get worse no matter how careful we are. So yeah, right now we are just trying to keep our heads above water. To build up resources so that Leet can make stuff, to pay our bills, and be able to afford to eat."
He gets a fierce look in his eyes, fist hitting his leg. "So yeah, we suck. We are scum. Judge us without being in our shoes, go ahead. But most of the jobs where we wreck shit, it's because we are paid to go be a distraction, or to destroy some gangs drug den that's disguised as a house. We try to only take jobs that will hurt the other gangs, like that one time we stole one of Squealers cars and went for a mad ride through the city, GTA style. E88 paid us to do that, and since the Merchants suck, I was more than happy to do it."
He stops pacing to face my newest self, gesturing for emphasis, voice softening. "But if you help us, then we don't have to go cause mayhem or rob somebody next month. We can get money from the ads, from donations, and subscribers. It's safe, easy, fun, and there is no possibility of someone getting hurt. I don't like being a bad guy. I want to change things Ash, but it's hard."
I can feel my resolve softening already. He does sound like he's trapped by circumstances, and I know exactly what that feels like.
"You probably wanted to be a hero, it's kinda obvious from that justified denouncement of us. You even have angel wings and a halo on you Ash. But I found you sobbing out your pain, yelling about the PRT being corrupt. They probably crushed your dreams, same as they crushed ours. If you help, you will be giving me and Leet a second chance. I can promise that we'll never force you to help us commit a crime."
He finally stops and just looks at one of my selves with his cold blue eyes, the only part of his face I can see. I can't read his emotions right now, his entire body is so still.
I have to think about this, it's a lot to take in all at once. His speech, rant, or whatever it was, is over. He is now just waiting patiently, letting me process.
I was cascaded out to four selves the entire time. As far as I could tell, he didn't lie. Obscured some things, found better ways to word other parts, omitted a few key things that I'll want to know more about at some point, but no actual lies. I'm not a master at reading body language, but I'd put my new observational powers up against Uber's possible 'expert liar' ability any day.
But I think that he wasn't trying to lie. He was trying to persuade me. He only can be expert at one thing at a time as far as I know, so I think he was just trying to get me to empathize with him, to convince me that he's not a villain. Despite the fact that I know what his is trying to do, it's still working.
To connect with me like that, he has to open himself up, that part can't be faked. To have it be so soon after my own experience of disappointment? My own reminder of how crappy life can be sometimes? Yeah, I can empathize.
It's noble of him to be sticking by his friend like that, even though it sounds like Leet and his power is the cause of most of their problems. A friend like that is rare. I used to think I had one who would be there for me no matter what.
Emma...
It turned out I was wrong about her, she turned on me for no reason that I ever found. But Uber went to prison for his friends mistake, then broke him out of it when his friend would have died in there. (If that part wasn't exaggerated a bit, I suspect it was.)
I know exactly how hard it is to not have money, resources, to have to accept a crummy deal since it is the best you will get. My bullies should have gotten punished, possibly sent to juvie or jail. But I took the deal that paid my medical bills. I felt shame and regret immediately, but I still did it. I still really wish I had a way to get money, to help my dad. He hides it well, but the bills are slowly piling up.
There is no excuse for some of the stuff that they have done, but denying him now would just drive them to commit more crimes. If I help with this harmless movie, I can try to maybe steer them away from crime, towards helping people. It's odd to think that two grown men might need my help, might want it. To think that I might be able to.
I am having a hard time deciding, but then I remember Sophia and how she just dismissed me and my powers. She assumed I was useless, told me to go home, be a delivery boy.
My powers have drawbacks, and so does Leet's. Uber's aren't that great either. We all got the short end of the power stick. If they had tried to make the best of it only to have this happen to them, what did that say about my possible future? I might never be great myself, I'm no Alexandria, Eidolon or Legend. But if I could help others to be heroes, then that counted as part of my contribution to society too, right?
I send a new self forward, holding out my hand. Uber blinks, then reaches out to grab it gently, shaking it twice in the quick, professional way that business men do it. The old selves dissolve and I take my hand back from his. "I don't actually know what happens if an afterimage dies. I'll want to test that before I let you dress me up as a ninja and start attacking me."
He looks worried at that, "Oh, crap. You're right, you'll have to test that then, I don't want to accidentally hurt you."
He pauses his worried musing to remark, "Afterimages huh? I like it, tis poetic."
Then he gets more serious and asks hesitantly, "Ok, do you want to test the dying thing yourself, or do you want help? I'm pretty sure that if anything goes wrong I can put on my medial expert hat and keep you alive, as long as it's not too bad. But uh, more info on how they work would be nice, if you do want my help."
I think about it with all my selves, but I'm getting pretty tired from all the cascading. Unless I want to try killing a self in a hospital, this is probably the closest I'll get to being near a qualified medical professional while power testing.
Plus it will solve that whole, 'unable to kill myself fast enough' problem I've been having when I did try it on my own. Falling off a building is not sufficient, it just broke my back, and I've yet to be able to work up the nerve to stab myself in the heart.
I nod at him with the newest self, now over by a pull-up rack. "Ok, so basically I teleport, and can choose to leave an afterimage behind. It lasts for a few seconds and does pre-programmed stuff, or continues doing what I was about to do."
I then make a quick port to show that I don't have to leave a self behind.
"If an afterimage gets hurt, the injuries don't get transferred to me. They only last for a few seconds, so I don't know if it's possible to actually fully kill one in that time. I know even beheading is rumored to leave the brain alive for a minute after. I don't know what the point of 'death' is for one of them. If it will make it turn to ash early, or leave a body behind. So, think you can kill me instantly?"
I ask him half teasing, half challenging. It's one of the reason why I have yet to try this experiment myself. The lack of good ways to kill myself instantly is a bit of a pain, and I already know what happens when I merely get hurt. I don't like getting hurt, so I've been avoiding testing this too much.
He seems to think about it for a second, then nods at me seriously. "I can do it, but I better go get that sword back from upstairs." To save time, I quickly port a few times to get up there, then port back down with the weapon. It's surprisingly sleek and sharp, made for use, not for show.
He looks at it and shakes his head, "I can't believe that we are talking about killing you. Are you sure it's ok? Cus I don't think I've ever personally killed anyone before, afterimage or not. Lots of robots and hard light illusions, even a few bio-monsters we made long ago, but no actual people."
His hesitance just reassures me more, and I hand over the sword. "I have to find out sooner or later. What if I try to go to an Endbringer fight, only to find out that an afterimage dying does something unexpected like explode into a fireball? I could kill someone by accident."
"Oh, and accidentally killing me with a fireball is ok then?" He sarcastically remarks.
He sighs, "Well, it's not like I'm not used to it by now... Ok, so I'm thinking that I'll go up through the bottom of your jaw, avoiding the helmet, right into the brain. That is about as instant as I can get it, given the lack of disintegration rays at my disposal. Also, this is definitely going into my top ten creepiest conversations, ever. So congratulations I guess?"
Then he pauses again, and starts walking to the stairs.
"We should do this on deck actually, so that if there is an explosion of some kind, it will just blow me into the water, where you can then presumably rescue me if you have also survived."
"Oh come on, there isn't going to be an explosion. That was just a random example."
"Ash, when you have lived through as many explosions as I have, you learn to always expect explosions."
As I follow him up to the deck, I wonder about Uber and how he got to be like this. He is so laid back and chill, but also terribly pessimistic sometimes. It's an odd combination. My guess is he probably started out laid back, then got more negative over time as life screwed him over.
"Ok, so you stand here. I'll hold this right below your head, you'll have to slip it in till it's positioned just right, and wow... That sounded kinda wrong there. Way too sexual, especially since you sound like you are well below eighteen. Forget I ever said that sentence. Please. I do not need a reputation as a pedophile."
He can't help but start laughing, after I break out into a fit of laughter myself. It's quite contagious and ends up going on for a while.
After a pause to stop laughing, we start trying to position ourselves again, only to start up again, laughing too much to be able to hold still. It ends up taking a full ten minutes before we get the damn sword under my helmet and below my jaw. I blame the stress. Clearly all of it is finally catching up to me.
"Ok, as soon as I say go, you teleport away. Once I see that you have safely made it, I'll strike. Ready?"
"Ready." I reply, suddenly nervous about this. Somehow I've ended up trusting a villain to hold a sword to my throat and not kill me, at least not until I'm ready. Have I gone crazy? I must have. Finding out Sophia is Shadow Stalker, it clearly broke my mind. And I'm only becoming sane now, when it's too late.
"Go!" He calls out.
I panic and cascade a self away, hoping that he really will wait for there to be another me before he strikes.
I can see him slide the sword up, one arm over my shoulder to keep me from moving. I can feel the sword go up through my jaw, my tongue, the top of my mouth. It hurts, but then it stops hurting. I die, but I also live.
It is the most incredibly strange, and strangely incredible thing I've ever experienced in my life.
Scintillating, that's a possible word for it.
Mercurial.
Transparent.
Light.
It washes away the pain of the death, makes it poetic. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.
I never thought I'd be the kind of person who sought out pain and death, but this actually isn't unpleasant. It is over in an instant, but the echoes of the death last for as long as that self would have normally lasted. It's not distracting, I can still notice the rest of the world with no problems. However I can see no reason not to stand still, close my eyes, and explore every bit of this odd experience, this odd feeling.
I suppose I must have worried Uber because he is there taking my wrist, pushing up my sleeve, and checking my pulse after four seconds of me just standing there. A few moments later the last of the death echoes fade away, and I gently pull my wrist away. "It is ok, I am alright. It was just very... odd."
"Are you sure? You just shuddered, then stood there very still."
"Sorry. It was not unpleasant at all, just, odd. And hey, at least I didn't explode!" I feel strange now, even after the echoes are gone. I'll have to figure this out, since it seems to linger, to make sure it's not impairing me.
"We have to try that again, I want to test something." I grab the sword from where it has fallen. It has no blood stains on it, they disappeared along with my body. It had stayed behind for the full five seconds despite being dead and inert, but I know I could have dissolved it sooner. However I have my suspicions that the death echo feeling will go away if the body does.
I re-position the sword, and Uber gets ready to kill me again. This must be a strange day for him. I know it is for me.
"Go." This time I cascade out fully, making all four selves.
He kills me again, the exact same way as before. He probably is using some type of 'expert stabber' part of his power.
I take a long look at my dead body. It is so strange to see myself lying there, blood seeping from my helmet, sword handle coming from the bottom of it. Uber has thoughtfully lowered it to the ground instead of just dropping it. A kind touch. I feel less impacted by the echoes this time. Whether it is because I have three living selves this time, or that I am simply more used to the effect, will remain unknown for now. No way to test that easily right now, nor does it matter much.
I know that my body still counts as one of my four selves, that I'll have to get rid of it to make another. But I am again surprisingly close to being able to make a fifth self. Perhaps being close to death is another key, along with anger? But I feel as far from anger as possible right now. More aware of the world, more philosophical perhaps, but much less angry than I was when I first started to talk to Uber.
I practice doing a few cascades, then deliberately dismiss my dead body early. As I thought, the echoes fade when my body does. I experimentally have a quick teleport over to the sword, grab it, then make a second self elsewhere. The self 'left behind' and pretending to be an afterimage stabs itself in the leg.
Hmm, as I thought, much less pain than expected. I think that dying has made me less able to feel pain. Perhaps something about my power knows that I need to be able to feel less pain when I've died recently?
Uber is looking a bit alarmed at this point, I should probably reassure him. He has proven trustworthy so far, much to my surprise. Despite his distasteful background, he could be a good ally in the future if he is serious about changing. "I'm fine. Just testing stuff."
"Right. Uh, you sure you are ok? It's a bit worrying when some dude stabs himself with a sword like that, even if it is just an afterimage..."
"Yeah, I'm sure. Relax Uber. It means I'm going to be able to help you do this ninja video thing, preventing you from having to commit crimes for the next while. And now I know what happens when I die." I hastily correct myself. "Or at least when an afterimage dies."
"Alright then. Uh, I'm gonna go back to working out then, unless you want to die again? God that sounds odd when I say it. Anyways, we can meet back here tomorrow so I can introduce you to Leet, if you want. Any particular time you like? Leet's a bit of a night owl, so nights are good for us."
"Nights are a no for me. How about around the middle of the day? Noon?"
"Yeah, noon works. I'll have to get that lazy-ass up early, but he'll come for the promise of endless waves of ninjas."
"Right then, ninja fight tomorrow. And you two can't commit any crimes while I'm helping you or else no more endless minions. I'm serious about this!" I tell him sternly.
"Sir, yes sir!" He snaps off a crisp, perfect salute. Laughing, he goes back down the stairs, leaving me on the deck of the ship.
You know, it's rather beautiful out today. I notice that the sunlight is scintillating and bouncing off the waves as I gaze out at the water, looking for a good spot to teleport to. My tears have long dried beneath my helmet, forgotten as I move forward. It's important to always keep going, no matter what mistakes you might make.
~~~~~~~~~~~
AN: Don't forget to review! Reviews are the fuel I consume to power my writing muscles! They also point out mistakes, and ask good questions that I really ought to have the answers to.
Anyways, I know some of you won't like the direction I'm taking this in, but I needed some other underdogs for her to team up with, and it couldn't be the Undersiders for secret plot reasons. It couldn't be the PRT/Wards or any hero group like New Wave, both for Sophia related reasons, and for dramatics. It's no fun if Taylor doesn't have everyone out to get her. And obviously her moral code is too strong to join the Merchants, ABB or E88.
Also, I might be rushing it a bit, her trusting Uber like this, but to be fair, she has this odd four body thing going on. Her emotions and mind are not exactly working the same way most peoples do. Lets just pretend its her Shard pushing her into it shall we?
Plus she was at an emotionally vulnerable moment when she met him, Uber is able to be very persuasive when he wants to be, and she hasn't had a friend in a very long time. I figure its legit, and even edited it a bit to show off more personal interactions between them.
Anyways, I knew that Uber and Leet had managed to survive up to at least the attack by Noelle in the original story, so they were nice, scrappy losers who refused to die, like Taylor! Plus it saves me from creating OC's. I'm really hesitant to do that.
Also, I hasten to reassure you all that I did read the WoG posts by Wildbow about how everyone overestimates Uber and Leet's usefulness, or makes their powers out to be better than they are. I will do my best to not fall into that trap, keeping them firmly in the 'this kinda sucks' category. The point of this story is not to have Leet build something bullshit, just because Taylor told him to.
She will have precisely one good idea about how to improve his power, and that's it. Otherwise it's all about leveraging what they already have or have demonstrated they can do in Cannon.
Last edited: Oct 29, 2016
123
Stillwind11
Dec 30, 2015
View discussion
Threadmarks Stamp 1-9
View content
Stillwind11
Stillwind11
Dec 30, 2015
#9
Stamp 1-9
It was tricky to sneak out today. Dad wanted to spend the day with me, and I had to find a way to blow him off.
"Sorry dad, not really feeling like going to the mall."
"Ok, how about the park? Or zoo? I don't really care where we go, but it's been a while since we just 'hanged out'. I know I've been busy lately, but I have the weekend off and nothing planned save for spending time with my poor, neglected little girl."
"Daaaaaaad..." Cue obligatory embarrassment.
"Oh, and I picked up some cheap Valentines candy a few days ago, just for bribing purposes. Here." He hands me a couple boxes of assorted chocolates. Man, it's getting harder to say no, now that I'm being showered with tasty chocolate treats. Curse his clever, fiendish plan!
Actually, that's a good line, I should use it. "Curse your clever, fiendish plan! How did you ever guess my weakness? Curse you Doctor Dad! You will never take me alive!"
"Muahahahaa, I knew you would be no match for my evil treats!" He says in a super low, raspy voice.
"Hey, I thought I was the villain and you the good guy?"
"We can BOTH be villains! Trying to out-evil each other. Muahahahahaa..." He starts to cough harshly. "Oh man, I can't do that anymore. Lowering my voice like that hurts like the dickens!"
I can't help but collapse on the couch giggling, as Dad wanders off to grab a glass of water. By the time he comes back, I've already inspected the contents of the boxes and sampled a few.
"Oh, how about this plan? I go wander about for a bit, do some jogging, hit the library like I'd planned, finish up some stuff I have going on. Then we go out tonight? Maybe for dinner or just walking along boardwalk, taking in the ocean view and maybe grab some food from a food truck or stall down there? We can window shop and people watch."
I watch to see his reaction. Hopefully the fact that I'm not asking for anything too expensive means he is willing to abandon the idea of spending the day with me, and just do an evening thing. If I can get him into that habit, it will save me some grief and trying to adjust things later when I'm more active as a hero. My powers meant that I'd be better off as an afternoon cape anyways, given the lack of night-vision. All the really dangerous areas tend to not have any working streetlights, so unless I can get Leet to make me something like Kid Win's visor, best to establish the pattern early.
He looks hesitant for a bit, but then nods. "Ok, I'll leave you to your evil plots and plans then. We can go out around six pm, that work for you?"
"Yes, I think that leaves me ample time for evil scheming. And eating this tasty evil candy."
"Hey, don't eat it all at once! Save some room for actual food."
"Muahahahaa, silly Doctor Dad... I'm evil, of course I'm going to eat all the candy!" I stuff two into my mouth just to emphasize the point.
"Curses! Whelp, I'm gonna go do some overdue paperwork. Might as well get a start on it. Have fun kiddo."
"Mruphmurf!"
Phew, problem solved. Now to make my escape!
~~~~~~~~~~~
I'm in costume and at the secret workout-ship. It's noon, and I'm ready to meet Leet for the first time. I knock loudly on the railing, then walk down. I see Uber right away, wearing some kind of ninja costume and holding a katana. (Or something like that. It's a long, slightly curved Japanese sword of some kind. I'm calling it a katana for now.)
He has a black solid mesh bodysuit that leaves his arms bare, showing off all his muscles. It's got some sections that look like a scaly kind of armor on his chest, along with lots of daggers strapped all over willy-nilly. There's a black scarf wrapped around his neck, one end dangling free. His helmet is more of that mesh stuff covering his lower face, ninja style of course, and then some kind of silvery metal thing covering his head. It looks like silvery claws around his face, then turns into swoopy lines sweeping back from his face, up over his head, to the back of his helmet.
"Nice, I'm glad you actually showed up again. Wasn't sure."
"So who are you supposed to be?"
"I'm wounded by your ignorance, you cannot even guess? Ninja Gaiden? Ryu Hayabusa?"
"Err, sorry, not much of a video gamer."
"Blasphemy!" He staggers back comically, holding his hand to his heart. "Ash, we are gonna have to have a video game marathon one day, just to teach you the finer points."
"Nah, I'll pass. So where is Leet?"
"Not here yet. I figured I'd give you time to get into costume."
He walks over to a bundle of clothes, with a flashlight on top.
"Here, this is fairly loose so it should fit easily even though I had to guess at the size. It's got a proper ninja mask, but you'll have to go helmet-less with that on. My costume is using the good fabric, but since yours is meant to be easily cut, it's just normal fibers. For actual filming we'll get you something a bit better fitting, but this is just a demo and to figure out the basics of how it's gonna work."
I grab the neatly folded bundle of grayish fabric.
"There is a flashlight on top in case you need light when you go find a private spot to put it on."
"Thanks. Did you guys really make that costume of yours in only a day?"
"Yup! Yours and Leet's too. Although to be fair, most of it was already pre-designed, it just needed to be made. Mine is pretty cut resistant too, as I'm sure you will find out later when you start trying to kill me."
I nod and port away, back up to the deck of the ship. I look around till I find another ruined ship in the distance that looks good, then port again. I quickly find a good hidey-hole and change. There's a simple grey bodysuit complete with attached, soft soled feet covers. It's all kinda loose on me, no doubt my disguise made Uber think I was a bit more beefy than I actually am. "Must be the shoulder pads..." I joke to myself.
I wrap the thicker Gi around me over the bodysuit, tying the belt on loosely as I don't want to emphasize my skinny waist any more than necessary. It's mostly white, but the borders are black, along with the belt. The mask is easy to put on, and I like that it blocks my vision less than the motorcycle helmet. Bit tricky getting all my hair under the head covering without it looking funny, but I manage after some fiddling. Black gloves complete the outfit.
I head back and find Uber on the deck of the ship, now holding two swords. "Hmm, much looser on you than I expected. Clearly eyeballing it didn't work too well, I'll have to get proper measurements from ya once we are done for the day. Oh, and here's your weapon, it's a wakizashi. Mine's called a katana."
Oh good, I was right about what his weapon was called. The other one has a pretty weird name though.
He holds it out to me, grasping the blade so that I can grab the handle. It looks more plain than his sword, shorter too. The edge looks much less sharp than his blade's edge.
I give it a few practice swings, it makes a nice noise cutting through the air. Uber immediately steps up and moves my hands around a bit. "There, that's the proper technique for holding it. Don't hold it too tightly, but not too loosely either."
I step back from him when he's done, uncomfortable with his kinda rude taking over like that.
"As yes, the expert at everything, I almost forgot. Anything else I should know?" I ask somewhat sarcastically.
"I'm not actually an expert at anything you know?" He replies annoyed. "It's a common misconception, but my power doesn't work like that."
He sighs and rubs his head, "But now I'm just taking it out on you, sorry. Anyways, there isn't much I can teach you in a few min. Basically I want you to hide. When Leet shows up, I'll do a bit of explanation, then I'll give you a signal. You pop down and try your best to hit me with the sword, I'll do my best to stop you. Don't worry too much about hitting me anywhere but my arms and face, as the costume can take the hits."
"Okay, whats the signal?"
"I will shout something like 'Behold, your minions are no match for me!' That's suitably dramatic I believe. Will you be ok with me attacking anything in my reach?"
"I think so, I'll make sure to pop in far from you, then leave an afterimage behind and go somewhere else. The afterimages will be the ones to get close to you, and as long as you stay in one spot it should be fine."
"Ok, then go hide. He should be here soon, I think I see him flying out."
I port away, and then look around from my hiding spot to see if I can spot Leet. In the distance a small figure standing on a platform of some kind is coming closer, using the derelict ships and abandoned shipping containers as cover from anyone on land who might be looking. He stands out noticeably against the water in his bright red robes, with a white mask of some kind on under the deep red hood. It's hard to make out much more detail from where I am, but I do notice that Leet seems to be pretty scrawny.
Leet eventually makes it to the ship and clumsily steps off his moving platform. It has a brick-like pattern spray painted on it, and I realize that it is probably one of those moving platforms in video games that move around slowly, and people are supposed to jump onto. It clearly has been re-purposed for the purpose of moving them around, no doubt because building something new would be too risky.
Leet seems to have very bad posture as he starts talking to Uber. It is such a contrast, seeing the two next to each-other. I can see why most of the time Uber takes the spotlight in the videos, Leet lacks any kind of impressiveness. Eventually Uber backs away from Leet, raises his weapon, and shouts in an incredibly dramatic and defiant way, "Your minions are no match for ME!"
Damn that man has a voice on him. There's my cue!
Quickly cascading down, I make self after self. I approach to swing my blades at him, starting out cautiously so as to not hurt him by accident.
This proves to be harder than I thought, as Uber quickly blocks the few strikes that would have gotten close, and lashes out with his blade. One self is suddenly headless, and another gets an incredibly painful gash along my arm, forcing me to drop my blade. Ow.
In other news, heads that lack a body are still totally aware of their surroundings. Finally, proof for that popular theory. Too bad I don't care right now.
Quickly I dismiss them to get rid of the distraction, ignoring the brief flash of pain along my arm and neck. The odd death echo effect from yesterday didn't linger for more than a few hours, but the pain surprisingly still isn't that much. I must be getting used to it.
Adrenalin makes my heart pump, and I get very focused. I'm gonna stop being nice now, clearly he is good enough to defend himself. Narrowing my eyes, I go at him again. Hard and fast, I try to score at least one hit on Uber.
I send one self up into the air to come at him from above, he won't be expecting that! Surrounding him, my selves move in to attack. Uber nimbly dodges my airborne self, and unfortunately once in the air, it's hard to change your course. Uber grabs me by the arm and throws me into my falling path, the two selves colliding and turning to ash. Better to just make new ones than try to sort them out in the few seconds they have left.
While this is happening, another self recklessly lunges forward, aiming to skewer him through his stomach. My blade is knocked aside by a gloved hand, and a kick to my face sends me reeling back.
Two new selves come in from opposite sides as I dissolve the one with a bleeding nose. A clang of blades as one is deflected, giving my other self an opening. I slash at his legs, keeping in mind that I don't want to hit his unarmored arms. Uber jumps over my blade and does a fancy flip over my head, using one hand to grab my head and give him a boost at the top of the arc. As he comes down, his blade hits my neck, not fully severing my head this time, but cutting it enough that I want to dismiss that self. But before he can react, another self is behind him and cutting at his armored chest.
A hit! I feel elated even as that self is gutted, entrails spilling out. Gross. Oh well, I got at least one hit on him, and man, this fight is incredible. I am so focused on fighting Uber and showing him that I'm not a pushover, that I don't even notice at first that I've gone up to five selves. It is hard to tell at first since I keep having to dismiss and remake more selves so fast, but there is a brief pause in the fighting when I finally hit Uber, and some red blood comes seeping out.
Concerned, I pull back, and notice that hey, there are five of me? Wow, I reached the next level of balance, I'm riding the biggest wave yet, and I was too focused on the fight to notice. Uber laughs and booms, "Don't worry, tis just fake blood under the top layer of armor. You haven't hurt me yet!"
The challenge spurs me onward. We'll see about that!
Four selves run in, while the fifth ports out to an upper deck for a better vantage point. Uber quickly cuts down a few selves with light gashes to arms and legs, using my numbers against me and making me get in my own way. You'd think that it would be harder to do that to me, but apparently I need to learn to coordinate with myself better.
Selves flash in and out, slowly getting better at teamwork, and at forcing Uber into positions that help me. I keep constantly rotating a self up to the upper deck every few seconds, to help me get a better idea of what is going on. I score a few more glancing hits on his body as time goes on, getting a bit better every time. My enhanced perceptions let me analyze the fight faster that I would have ever believed possible, letting me think logically about every move. I'm not just reacting on reflex.
I try the 'death from above' trick a few more times, getting better at using it but still not very effective. If I go too high up, I have more time to prepare to hit him, but can't steer myself or stop him from moving away unless my other selves can mange some trick to stop him. If I go too low, then I have no time to actually get ready for it. Falling is a bit disorientating after-all. Once I accidentally just landed on him like a rag-doll. Bashed my own ribs on his head, and accidentally bit my tongue off. Not fun, and it didn't even faze him. Darn stupidly strong people!
Eventually it all comes to an end around five min into the fight. "Hold, hold! Enough Ash!"
I stop rushing in to attack, and dwindle down to one self. Uber's arms have sweat all over them, and he is breathing heavily. Surprisingly, I'm a bit sweaty too. I might have been porting for most of it, but apparently I did manage to do enough physical activity there to matter.
"So what do you think Leet? Good enough for that movie?"
"Holy fuck that was awesome!"
Uber nods at Leet and walks over to a small blue cooler hidden in a corner. He pulls it open and rummages around. Tossing me an unopened bottle of water, he opens his own, pulls down the part of the mask covering his mouth, and starts to chug.
I barely manage to catch it, not having expected to get one myself. "Thanks." I twist the top off and turn away from them so they can't see my girlish lips and chin as I briefly pull down the ninja mask and take a sip. Aaahhhh, cool, refreshing, and possibly the best tasting thing in the world right now. I might not have exerted myself much physically, but using five selves in the fight for a full five minutes? That sure wasn't easy.
"How the fucking hell did you mange this Uber?" Leet sounds impressed. "I thought we didn't have the budget for hiring minions, let alone another cape!"
Uber just grins, "What? You mean you doubted me and my Uberness?"
"Har har, please tell me that this isn't Spree or Flashmob?" He looks at me, and while I can't see his face behind the smooth white mask, his body language is nervous? Defensive? I'd be nervous too if I thought I was anywhere near Spree. That cape was serious bad news. He was a member of the Teeth, a sadistic group of capes and normal people who liked to cause carnage and destruction on a grand scale.
"No, no, no, Ash here is actually more on the heroic side of things."
"Good, I could deal with Prism or someone like her, but the other two are a bit sketchy even for us."
Leet then starts to inspect me, looking me up and down. "So... What exactly did Uber promise you?"
"New costume, and that you two wouldn't do anything criminal for as long as I was working with you. Although I suppose if you wanted to go harass a cape from one of the gangs I wouldn't say no."
"Uberrrrrr... Really?" He groans dramatically.
"Hey, that's a cheap price and you know it! Where else are we gonna get legions of disposable minions that provide their own realistic gore effects? Plus no-one is hurt in the slightest at the end of the day. And you saw how he just got better at fighting as the battle went on! By the time we actually film this, he'll be fighting like a proper ninja."
"How did you even meet this guy? How do you even know he's safe to work with?" Leet complains.
"Dude, he's a new gym buddy, he's cool. And I met him out here actually, on this deck. He had to blow off some steam cus the PRT had done him wrong. Picked our ship to do it on."
"Of all the ships in the Bay, you had to pick ours huh?" Leet whines at me, posture slumping even more in defeat. Seems like he knows when he's beaten.
Man, this guy really is opposite of Uber, I don't know how he can stand it. "Look, do you want me to help you make a ninja movie or not?" I ask annoyed.
"Yeah, yeah, fine. You were pretty awesome at it, the guts spilling out was super cool. It's too bad it faded so fast."
"I'll work on that." I dryly respond, rolling my eyes.
Uber sees it and laughs. "Hey, want a sandwich? I got a bunch in here. I figure we eat, talk about the details, hash out a filming schedule, and so on?"
I nod, walk over, and start to rummage. Each sandwich is helpfully labeled with the contents, so I snag a turkey, swiss, mayo and lettuce on rye. Uber is incredibly well prepared, I can see that it's going to be easy to work with him. Little touches that I might have forgotten, like napkins, are tucked into a ziplock bag.
After eating my sandwich in privacy, I go back and see him pull out some folding chairs from a broken crate. I laugh, and port over to help set them up. This might actually be fun, plus learning how to fight will be incredibly useful for the future. It's almost like having friends again.
I think I made a good decision here. I had been agonizing over it all night and this morning, but being here, making jokes with Uber and even occasionally Leet? It feels right. It's nice.
~~~~~~~~~~~
AN: Fight scene! Be gentle my dear readers, for tis my first ever fight scene. I've never written one before, especially not one so confusing with a medley of duplicating selves.
And yes, Leet is gonna be a whiny little twit, but thankfully Taylor got enough of a bonding thing going with Uber to make her willing to put up with it. The way I see it, I'm having to condense the roles of the Undersiders down to only two characters.
Leet is Bitch and Regent. Annoying, a smart-ass, plus awkward social skills and tends to test limits, ect.
Uber is Grue and Tattletale. Leader-ish, confident, competent, insightful and plans far ahead, ect.
It's actually neat how it works out like that. :)
Last edited: Oct 29, 2016
118
Stillwind11
Dec 30, 2015
View discussion
Threadmarks Interlude 1 (Danny)
View content
Stillwind11
Stillwind11
Dec 30, 2015
#10
Interlude 1 (Danny)
"We don't know how long he had been there. Suspended in the air above the Atlantic Ocean. On May twentieth, 1982, an ocean liner was crossing from Plymouth to Boston when a passenger spotted him. He was naked, his arms to his sides, his long hair blowing in the wind as he stood in the sky, nearly a hundred feet above the gently cresting waves. His skin and hair can only be described as a burnished gold. With neither body hair nor clothes to cover him, it is said, he seemed almost artificial.
After a discussion including passenger and crew, the liner detoured to get closer. It was a sunny day, and passengers crowded to the railings to get a better look. As if sharing their curiosity, the figure drew closer as well. His expression was unchanging, but witnesses at the scene reported that he appeared deeply sad.
'I thought he was going to crack his facade and cry any moment', said Grace Lands, 'But when I reached out and touched his fingertips, I was the one who burst into tears.'
'That boat trip was a final journey for me. I had cancer, and I wasn't brave enough to face it. Can't believe I'm admitting this in front of a camera, but I was going back to Boston, where I was born, to end things myself. After I met him, I changed my mind. Didn't matter anyways. I went to a doctor, and he said there was no sign I ever had the disease.'
'My brother, Andrew Hawke, was the last passenger to make any sort of contact with him, I remember. He climbed up onto the railing, and, almost falling off, he clasped the hand of the golden man. The rest of us had to grab onto him to keep him from falling. Whatever happened left him with a quiet awe. When the man with the golden skin flew away, my brother stayed silent. The rest of the way to Boston, my brother didn't say a word. When we docked, and the spell finally broke, my brother babbled his excitement to reporters like a child.'
The golden man would reappear several more times in the coming months and years. At some point, he donned clothing. At first, a sheet worn over one shoulder and pinned at either side of the waist, then more conventional clothes. In 1999, he donned the white bodysuit he still wears today. For more than a decade, we have wondered, where did our golden man get these things? Who was he in contact with?
Periodically at first, then with an increasing frequency, the golden man started to intervene in times of crisis. For events as small as a car accident, as great as natural disasters, he has arrived and used his abilities to save us. A flash of light to freeze water reinforcing a levee stressed by a hurricane. A terrorist act averted. A serial murderer caught. A volcano quelled. Miracles, it was said.
His pace increased, perhaps because he was still learning what he could do, perhaps because he was getting a greater sense of where he was needed. By the middle of the 1990s, he was traveling from crisis to crisis, flying faster than the speed of sound. In fifteen years, he has not rested.
He has been known to speak just once in thirty years. After extinguishing widespread fire in Alexandrovsk, he paused to survey the scene and be sure no blazes remained. A reporter spoke to him, and asked, 'Kto vy?' – what are you?
Shocking the world, caught on camera in a scene replayed innumerable times, he answered in a voice that sounded as though it might never have uttered a sound before. Barely audible, he told her, 'Scion'.
It became the name we used for him. Ironic, because we took a word that meant descendant, and used it to name the first of many superpowered individuals – parahumans – to appear across Earth.
Just five years after Scion's first appearance, the superheroes emerged from the cover of rumor and secrecy to show themselves to the public. Though the villains followed soon after, it was the heroes who shattered any illusions of the parahumans being divine figures. In 1989, attempting to quell a riot over a basketball game in Michigan, the superhero known to the public as Vikare stepped in, only to be clubbed over the head. He died not long after of a brain embolism. Later, he would be revealed to be Andrew Hawke.
The golden age of the parahumans was thus short lived. They were not the deific figures they had appeared to be. Parahumans were, after all, people with powers, and people are flawed at their core. Government agencies took a firmer hand, and state-"
The television flicked off, and the screen went black, cutting the documentary off mid sentence. Danny Hebert sighed and sat down on the bed, only to stand just a moment later and resume pacing.
It was five forty-five in the afternoon, and Taylor was not home yet. Worse, she had never been to the library.
Danny ran his hands through his hair, which was thinned enough at the top to be closer to baldness than not. Usually he didn't work the weekends. However he had just been called a few hours ago by the weekend secretary about a new client offering a possible job for twenty men, and they wanted to have a meeting at seven. Today.
He had originally made plans to spend the evening with Taylor, to make up for the neglect, maybe re-connect with her. But now he had to cancel. This was too big, too important. Yes, his family was important to him, and he missed spending time with his little girl. He missed the connection they used to have, before she grew up, before she became distant. But his workers also had people to worry about. This job could be important, it could let them feed their family's without having to resort to crime. Far too many of his men had been turning to the gangs lately.
So he had called the library a few hours ago to let her know about the change in plans. But she was not there. It was a bit odd, since she should have been done her running by then. He wondered, even as he knew the answer, why he hadn't gotten Taylor a cell phone. Danny didn't know what his daughter was doing, and had no easy way to get in touch with her.
Perhaps she was really pushing herself with the running, more than he had realized? Or else she might have run into trouble. She wasn't happy, he knew, and exercise was her way of working through it. It all stemmed from that bullying problem, the one he had not even known about until the hospital incident. He liked that her running made her feel better about herself, that she seemed to be doing it in a reasonable, healthy way, but what if she was starting to go overboard? He just hated that she had to do it here, in this neighborhood. Because here, a skinny girl in her mid-teens was an easy target for attack. A mugging or worse – he couldn't even articulate the worst of the possibilities in his own thoughts without feeling physically sick
There was precious little Danny could do about it. Heck, not much he could do about anything, not even the bullying. He had threatened to sue the school after his daughter had been taken to the hospital, and the school board had responded by settling, paying her hospital bills and promising they would look out for her to prevent such events from occurring in the future. It was a feeble promise made by a chronically overworked staff and it didn't do a thing to ease his worries.
His efforts to have her change schools had been stubbornly countered with rules and regulations about the maximum travel times a student was allowed to have between home and a given school. The only other school within a reasonable distance of Taylor's place of residence was Arcadia High, and it was already desperately overcrowded with more than two hundred students on a list requesting admittance. In the end, when she decided to home-school herself, it had been a relief. At least she didn't have to go back.
Countless times, he had glanced out the window, hoping to see Taylor coming in early maybe having changed her mind about hitting the library.
For the twentieth time, he felt the urge to ask his wife for help, for advice, for support. But her side of the bed was empty and it had been for some time. Daily, it seemed, he was struck by the urge to call her cell phone. He knew it was stupid – she wouldn't pick up – and if he dwelt on that for too long, he became angry at her, which just made him feel worse.
The second possibility wasn't much better, if Taylor had not run into trouble, perhaps she had lied? But what else would she be doing? Taylor wasn't social. She didn't go to parties, she wouldn't drink, she wasn't even that interested in champagne when they celebrated the New Year together. She was a sensible girl, took after her mother like that.
He glanced out the window again. Nothing.
He had tried to call other library's in the city. Perhaps she was simply going to a further one? It would be a laugh if that had been the cause of his worry. But no, nothing. He had given it another hour and called them all again, asking the librarians to pass on his message as soon as they saw her. She still was not there, even though it was almost four thirty by the time he had finished another round of calls.
Perhaps she was trying to rekindle her friendship with Emma? Or spending time with someone she had met at the library? Taylor hadn't said as much aloud, but whatever had been going on had been mean, persistent and threatening enough that Emma, Taylor's closest friend for years, had stopped spending time with her. It galled him. Taylor deserved to have friends, and not have bullies drive them away. She deserved so much more than he could provide for her.
Impotent. Danny was helpless where it counted. There was no action he could take – he had already left messages at the library's, and calling any more would only annoy them. He didn't know where exactly she ran, where she went during the day, when he was at work.
The slightest of vibrations in the house marked the escape of the warm air in the house to the cold outdoors, and there was a muffled whoosh as the kitchen door shut again. Danny Hebert felt a thrill of relief coupled with fear. If he went downstairs to find his daughter, would he find her hurting or hurt? Happy from spending time with a new friend? Depressed from an encounter with the bullies from her old school? He wished he could simply ask her what they had done to her, what horrors they had used to break her, turn her from a happy chatty kid, into this silent, brooding teen.
She had told him, in every way except articulating it aloud, that she didn't want that. She had pleaded with him, with body language and averted eye contact, unfinished sentences and things left unsaid, not to ask, not to push, not to see. He couldn't say why, exactly. Home was an escape from the bullies, he'd suspected, and if he recognized the bullying, made it a reality here, maybe she wouldn't have that relief from it. Perhaps it was shame, that his daughter didn't want him to see her like that, didn't want to be that weak in front of him. He really hoped that wasn't the case.
So he ran his fingers through his hair once more and went downstairs to give her the bad news. But he silently told himself that if she seemed upset, unhappy, then he would do his best to reschedule the meeting, to cut it short and come back here fast. The house was old, and it hadn't been a high quality building when it had been new, so the walls were thin and the structure prone to making noise at every opportunity. The stairs creaked loudly as he descended.
"Hey dad!" A chirpy happy voice pipes up from the kitchen. Relief floods though him. Taylor might be able to hide her emotions in her face, but her voice always gave it away. There was no tightness that would indicate a false mask of cheer.
"So got lots done at the library. Gotta say, the teachers at Winslow were pretty awful if I can be zooming along like this on my own."
Relief became anger. He was angry at Taylor, for making him worry, for lying about where she had been today and then not even going out of her way to let him know she was okay. He felt a smouldering resentment towards the city, for having neighborhoods and people he couldn't trust his daughter to. He hated the bullies that preyed on his daughter.
Underlying it all was frustration with himself. Danny Hebert was the one person he could control in all of this, and Danny Hebert had failed to do anything that mattered. He hadn't gotten answers, hadn't stopped the bullies, hadn't protected his daughter. Worst of all was the idea that this might have happened before, with him simply being at work and unable to supervise her self-learning.
He stopped himself from walking into the kitchen, from shouting at her and demanding answers, even if it was what he wanted, more than anything. Where had she been, what had she been doing? Was she even studying? He knew that by confronting her and getting angry at her, he would do more harm than good, would threaten to sever any bond of trust they had forged between them.
Danny's father had been a powerful, heavyset man, and Danny hadn't gotten any of those genes. Danny had been a nerd when the term was still young in popular culture, stick thin, awkward, short sighted, glasses, bad fashion sense. What he had inherited was his father's famous temper. It was quick to rise and startling in its intensity.
Unlike his father, Danny had only ever hit someone in anger twice, both times when he was much younger. That said, just like his father, he could and would go off on tirades that would leave people shaking. Danny had long viewed the moment he'd started to see himself as a man, an adult, to be the point in time where he had sworn to himself that he wouldn't ever lose his temper with his family. He wouldn't pass that on to his child the way his father had to him.
He had never broken that oath with Taylor, and knowing that was what kept him self contained, but wanting to punch something. While he'd never gotten angry at her, never screamed at her, he knew Taylor had seen him angry. Once, he had been at work, talking to a mayor's aide. The man had told Danny that the revival projects for the Docks were being cancelled and that, contrary to promises, there were to be layoffs rather than new jobs for the already beleaguered Dockworkers.
Taylor had been spending the morning in his office on the promise that they would go out for the afternoon, and had been in a position to see him fly off the handle in the worst way with the man. Four years ago, he had lost his temper with Annette for the first time, breaking his oath to himself. That had been the last time he had seen her. Taylor hadn't been there to see him shouting at her mother, but he was fairly certain she'd heard some of it. It shamed him.
The third and last time that he had lost his temper where Taylor had been in a position to know had been when she had been hospitalized following the incident in January. He'd screamed at the school's principal, who had deserved it, and at Taylor's then-Biology teacher, who probably hadn't. It had been bad enough that a nurse had threatened to call for a police officer, and Danny, barely mollified, had stomped from the hallway to the hospital room to find his daughter more or less conscious and wide eyed in reaction.
Danny harbored a deep fear that the reason Taylor hadn't offered any details on the bullying was out of fear he would, in blind rage, do something about it. It made him feel sick, the notion that he might have contributed something to his daughter's self imposed isolation in how she was dealing with her problems.
It took Danny a long moment to calm down, helped by telling himself over and over that Taylor was okay, that she was home, that she was safe. It was something of a blessing that, as the anger faded, he felt drained. He stepped into the kitchen and watched as his daughter blinked at him, confused. "Dad?"
"Sorry, had to take a moment to collect my thoughts. I have some bad news honey. There's a new client who wants to meet with me, to talk about getting twenty guys hired for a few months. This is big, it could make a huge impact for some of them. But I have to go soon, as the meeting is at seven, and I don't know how long it will be. I'm really sorry, and I promise we can spend time together tomorrow instead. Rain-check?"
She looks blank, but only a little disappointed. It hurts, that she might be used to this by now. Danny decides to push a bit, to see if he can't get anything from her.
"I tried to call the library's, leaving messages for you, but they said that you weren't there?"
Her voice turns cautious, less cheerful. "Oh." She folds her arms around herself, defensive. "Maybe they just didn't notice me?"
He ignores the obvious lie. Taylor still won't trust him, so he'll just have to be patient. "It's ok Taylor, I just was concerned that you might have been attacked while running. Besides, it doesn't really matter as long as you ace those year end tests right?" Danny forces out a laugh.
"I guess I'll have to get you some pepper spray or something, to make me be less of a worry-wart."
"Dad..." Her voice softens, "It's fine. We can go on our little excursion tomorrow night. I don't mind, really."
It's hard to decipher that one, but Danny decides that it means forgiveness, unspoken understanding, and a truce. He grabs his keys, pulls on a jacket, kisses Taylor on the top of her head, and heads out. Time to go.
Last edited: Oct 29, 2016
109
Stillwind11
Dec 30, 2015
View discussion
1 of 3
Next
Last
Threadmarks
View content
You must log in or register to reply here.
Share
Worm
Style chooser
Contact us
Terms and rules
Privacy policy
Help
RSS