Current Energy: 14

Friday, January 7th, 2011

The Docks, Brockton Bay

"Dammit!" Taylor Hebert - she guessed she should get used to the idea of answering to 'Nexus' now - cursed, diving forward into a roll that she exited by pushing off the ground with her hands, then thrusting both of her feet forward with all the strength she could muster into the chest of yet another Oni Lee clone. Without missing a beat, she pinwheeled her arms in the air, twisting around so she would land in a runner's pose and taking off within moments of touching the ground, bodily charging through yet another clone before it could detonate it's held flashbang.

Once again, she had to thank Emmy for his timely bestowal of the Combat Thinker power that was allowing her to keep up with the more experienced cape. She certainly didn't like the feeling, either of gaining or using the power, but she had to admit it was proving useful.

The problem was twofold for Taylor. One, new powers hurt. She'd never had a migraine or a hangover, but she had to assume that learning a new power from Emmy without preparation felt much the same as having both at once. Even now she had to fight down the dull ache in her skull threatening to distract her from the next move she would have to make, the next strike she would have to outmatch.

Two, it was accompanied by a very brief crash course in how the skill had originally been used by its owner - the 'card' Emmy had currently drawn. It... wasn't pretty. No one should have to experience memories of the type of brutal combat 'Zaraki Kenpachi' had gone through, and even seemed to enjoy. But she had. She had experienced each gouged out eye, each suicidal rush, each animalistic response to his enemies. Because that was the core of the power. It wasn't precognitive. It was instinct. The instincts of a beast, cornered and ready to lash out. A predator whose only solution was to try and overwhelm it's attacker with lethal force.

Because that's what the power did. It showed her how to move in order to hurt and kill her enemies. It didn't dodge. It didn't block. It didn't evade. It just showed her how to attack.

It was, as with many things Emmy gave her, both disturbing and useful at once.

There was a moment - just a single moment mind - when she thought she might have accidentally actually killed her attacker. She had managed to spin around and attack a clone - they almost always appeared behind her for some reason - sending it flying into a nearby cargo container hard enough to knock the thing over. The clone hadn't so much as twitched for a second, and until it had disappeared she had thought that was it. She had just killed a man, and she was curiously apathetic about it.

Then a new and unhurt Oni Lee had appeared atop a nearby beached ships prow, and she had tensed, waiting for hostilities to return. Her lungs burned from the exertion. Her muscles felt like stretched taffy, the contortions she was pushing herself through hurting her nearly as much as her opponent. Her head hurt, and her throat ached in that way it always did when she was trying to hold back tears.

This was all just... too much. She thought she had finally caught a break. She had powers! Her bullies were finally, finally, going to be punished. She was talking to her Dad again, sort of. She even had a friend... kind of. She just innately trusted Emmy.

Even before he had declared her his best friend, she had known that he was there for her. Not in the friendly emotional sense, although he would be that too if she asked. No, Emmy was there for her. She was the literal reason he existed. He had nothing and no one else, and he likely never would. She was ashamed to admit it, but deep down, she liked it that way. Liked that she was all that mattered to him. That he could never, ever betray her as Emma had. And she was ashamed of it. It wasn't just selfish, it was tyrannical.

That was why she insisted he was his own person. It was why she wouldn't tolerate people treating him as less of a person, no matter how unnerving other people found him. Because if he was really just a puppet forced to love her, then what did that say about her?

The Endbringer sirens were going off now. She could hear the wail in the distance and feel the heat waves rolling towards her from the direction she knew Emmy was in.

The direction Emmy was in she realized, at the same time that Oni Lee swivelled to stare out over the bay.

Emmy's presence was... not gone, but diminished. Lessened. The loose sense of direction and intent that represented him in the back of her awareness had gone curiously quiet, like a compass atop a pole, spinning aimlessly.

Before she could even register what was going on, Oni Lee vanished again, and this time, he was not accompanied by a renewed burst of violence, or a sudden pinging of her new instincts telling her to lash out. Instead, he was merely gone.

She waited a moment, not daring to believe Oni Lee was truly gone, and then pursed her lips as she heard the approach of several vehicles. That would likely be the Protectorate arriving. Small wonder they would show up to something like this. She needed to get Lung. Emmy shouldn't have killed him, even if it led to his-

Emmy shouldn't have killed him, because she had asked him not to. She would deal with the consequences of that later. For now, she was on her own.

Quickly sighting on the last location she could recall her friend being, she jumped forward, awkwardly schooling her power into loose platforms at her feet as she moved. It was unwieldy, and the platforms didn't remain stable for very long, certainly not long enough that she would be comfortable cavorting across the sky with them like Emmy did, but they lasted long enough for her to leap.frog from one to the next. She did so, even as an unused portion of her brain began prodding at the bundle in her mind that represented Emmy. It wasn't doing anything, but she found she couldn't easily force the sensation to go away without dropping what she was already doing, and so she let it be.

Eventually, she made it to her target area, only to find a perfectly undamaged Lung floating face up in the bay. She considered the fact that this scum had killed what passed for her only friend, and despite the very temporary nature of that death, she was momentarily blinded by rage. Enough so that she found herself in the process of punting him back to the shoreline before stopping herself.

Control. She had to control herself. Emmy was strong. Unbelievably strong. So much so that he didn't require focus or direction to ensure his power was used properly. She didn't have that. She was orders of magnitude weaker than her friend, so she needed to make every movement count. And so, control. Focus. Control.

She repeated the words to herself as she grabbed Lung by the back of his neck, then began dragging him back to the shoreline.

By the time she was within sight of the shore though, a number of things became noticeable.

One. The approaching vehicles had not, in fact, been the Protectorate.

Two. Over a half dozen capes were standing over a number of men wearing ABB colours, all forced to kneel on the ground with their hands behind there heads.

Three. Her father was being quietly restrained to the side of this display by a man in a bleached white suit, with bleached white skin and hair.

And finally, four; Kaiser was pleasantly beckoning her forward, like a king welcoming a Hero to his court.

Her mind raced furiously as she approached. She couldn't just leave, they had her Dad! But she couldn't deliver an unconscious Lung to them either. They would kill him in cold blood.

What, she asked herself, would Emmy do?

Probably try to cow them all into submission with overwhelming violence.

...okay, what would Emmy do if he wasn't an amoral psychopath?