Current Energy: 8
Current Training: Lesser Magic Useage (5/10) - (7/10)
Sunday, February 6th, 2011
Hebert Household, Brockton Bay
"Magic, comes in many forms. But it's primary form, is the manipulation of the elements. Fire, Ice, Lightning - the concepts behind them, more than just there physical forms. A skilled magician could effect wonders through the combinining of these things." Ozma explains to Taylor who is sipping a cup of tea across from him while Ozma works his way through his third or fourth cup of hot chocolate.
"I can already do that though." Taylor points out, slightly non plussed as she lifts a hand and a small flame appears in it. You're briefly surprised by that because you understand direct applications of your Master's Onmyoudo abilities have always been somewhat more limited than her Talisman work. Even something as simple as creating a flame in her hand would have taken her a few moments of concentration that she could ill afford in combat a week ago.
"What you are holding, is fire. A neophyte can make 'fire'. It's very simple. That's not a spell. That's a building block." Ozma chides her.
"Fire can be many things. It is consumption. It is change. It is wild. A true Master can take just these aspects from the flame to affect things." Ozma continues. Taylor frowns at this, but extinguishes the flame in her palm, considering his statement.
"Can you give me an example? My magic doesn't work like that. I don't even make fire. I just ask a spirit of fire to do it for me." She explains, waving a hand in the air to indicate the room around you.
"Imagine a crystal ball. There is nothing magical about it. However, you wish to use it to see great distances. And so you bend 'Light' to show you an image, you give it permanency with 'Earth', and you trap the image in the crystal with 'Shadow'. Now, for so long as you have invested those things in the crystal - it will scry for you. But Magic always has a cost. When you use it, you are giving it up. While that crystal ball is active, your ability to use Light, Earth, or Shadow will be severely reduced - if not taken entirely." Ozma continues. You suspect that if he wasn't mindful of your Energy reserves he would be waving his hands around to make a show of what he is saying using his own magic.
You also suspect he might have just explained why his own magic is so weakened. After all, you can think of at least six subjects he has invested it in off the top of your head. The Maidens and the Branwen's. Although, you aren't really sure what combination of elements would allow you to give someone the power to turn into a bird.
"So, you can apply it to a limited number of things at once?" Taylor notes curiously.
"Correct. In practical application, I believe my own form of Magic is slightly more applicable to 'on the fly' usage than your own - which seems to have a significant focus on ritual components." Ozma notes. Then he pauses in consideration.
"Granted, I can only grant you a limited application of that power. My apologies. I suppose much of this would be entirely academic to you." He admits.
"No, it's fine. Fascinating, actually. It's completely different from what I can already do. Even though they're both called 'Magic' they have nearly nothing in common." She muses.
"Yes, well. If we had access to power such as yours on Remnant, we could-" Ozma begins but is cut off as the front door of the house opens, causing your Master to jolt slightly in surprise, then bolt upright with her sword drawn as she advances towards the front door.
[Ehem.] You faux cough to remind the spirit that you'd like your body back. He sighs dejectedly at that, but relinquishes his control, allowing you to follow Taylor to the front hallway, where Danny is standing with a particularly bedraggled looking Fleur. She has bags under her eyes, and a particularly downcast expression on her face.
"Last I checked I live here too kiddo." Danny points out, when Taylor fails to put her sword down immediately - more from shock than any sense of actual wariness.
"Shouldn't you be at work? Is everything okay?" Taylor asks, quickly disappearing her weapon to glance back and forth between Danny and Fleur as if she had never actually expected them to interact again.
"Well, Jess here showed up at the Heap early this morning looking for somewhere to sleep, but you don't really have beds in the place so I told her she could stay here for a while." Danny answers smoothly.
"Addendum! You said we could crash here for a while!" Mouse Protector declares from outside, lugging a huge suitcase into the hallway behind Danny and Fleur. Unlike the Taylors Father and Jess, she is wearing one of the domino masks the PRT provides, the ones that slightly blur your face.
"But... what about Wreck and Aspirant?" Taylor asks in dismay.
"Trainwreck sleeps in his suit and Aspirant bought himself a futon ages ago. We do pay them you know." Danny points out.
"What about you?!" Taylor continues.
"...I have an office, and a very comfortable desk?" He offers sheepishly.
"Emmy, note to self, buy furniture." Taylor says, pinching the bridge of her nose and closing her eyes, while stepping aside so everyone can get fully into the building.
"Noted." You acknowledge with some amusement.
"I... I'm really sorry." Jess says as she passes Taylor, a hollow look in her eyes. Concerned, your Master pulls her aside and sits her in the living room while Mouse Protector and Danny move about the house.
"You don't even have a guest room? Come on Danny boy, your daughters making that chedder, you should upgrade already! She's the big cheese in this place right?" Mouse yells from somewhere upstairs.
"I don't just take my daughters money. She earned it. It's hers. And if you touch anything in my bedroom without my permission, we'll be having words." Danny fires back.
"What happened?" Taylor asks Jess, ignoring the byplay.
"I - Vicky managed to convince them that I'm actually me but... they said they didn't know what to do right away. Carol convinced them to ask me to get back to them after they've had time to 'process'." Jess says bitterly.
"...But you have literally nowhere else to go." Taylor says, frowning.
"Yeah, Vicky... wasn't happy. I don't think Amy was either, but she's too quiet to cause a scene." She notes in return. Neither girl brings up the fact that she was probably expecting to stay with Lightstar, her boyfriend. Neither girl mentions that her coming back would probably screw his life up in a number of ways.
"Is Vicky liable to show up on my doorstep next?" Taylor asks, in lieu of all that goes unspoken.
"Probably not. I think she went to see her boyfriend. Dean?" Jess explains lifelessly.
"O-kay. One of you can take the couch, and one of you can have my bedroom - unless you're willing to share. I barely sleep here anyway." Danny says as he comes down the stairs, his eyes darting to a picture of his late wife on a nearby wall in a motion you're sure only you and Taylor notice.
"Thank you for the ride here Danny. I- don't actually know what I would have done." Jess says, some life returning to her tone - though not much.
"It's what my daughter would do. I assume anyway." He answers with an awkward shrug and a sly look towards Taylor.
"She recruited most of her team off the streets after all." He says with a chuckle.
"No I- I mean technically- Huh." Taylor says after a second, realizing that yes, everyone on her team was technically homeless before Parian joined up.
"Anyway. I have to get to work. I won't be gone for a long, just some clerical stuff, so if you need me I'll be at the Heap. Taylor can bring you over - right?" Danny finishes, before turning to Taylor for confirmation.
"Yeah I've got it. I wanted to do a training session with the team today anyway." Taylor says with a glint in her eyes that causes Danny to pale appreciably.
"RightwelllookslikeImightbelateso-" He blurts out, quickly pivoting on one foot and half running half walking out of the house. The engine of his old truck is audible quickly after, receding into the distance.
"He's nice." Jess says absently, staring after him for a second before turning back to Taylor, her mood only slightly improved.
Truthfully, you couldn't agree more. It's not as pronounced, but since Taylor got powers, got you really, Danny has been slowly forced further and further away from his own depression and doubts. He still has worries and concerns, but they are much more in line with those of a normal father, rather than one who is paranoid and reeling from the loss of his wife.
Even if he still drastically overworks himself.
"Yeah. He's the best." Taylor admits shyly. Then blinks and turns to Jess with her stepford smile on.
"So you wanna learn to use that sword?" She says pleasantly.
Sunday, February 6th, 2011
The Heap, Brockton Bay
"I regret this!" Jess screams as her Shinigami form desperately scrambles backwards in an attempt to avoid your Master's brutal sword strikes.
"Go Invisi-babe! I can't fucking tell what's going on, but as long as you're fighting, I ain't!" Trainwreck yells from the sidelines, where he and Aspirant cooling down from their own bouts against your Master. To their side sits Jess's body, carefully leaned against a wall and out of the way of any of the fighting.
"This is nothing! Come on! Use both hands!" Your Master yells gleefully at the older woman.
"How would that help!?" She screeches as she jumps bodily to the side, narrowly avoiding Taylor's sword as it plows three feet into the wall she had been backed up against.
"Using both hands increases control! Power! Accuracy!" She continues to yell, swinging her sword haphazardly to the left and force Jess back from her own aborted attempt to counterattack.
"Is this... normal?" Oliver asks from near Aspirant and Trainwreck, dressed in a fetching pair of gym clothes that nearly gave your Master a stroke the first time she saw him in them.
Trainwreck and Aspirant look at each other, then to your Master, then back to Oliver in unison.
"Eh." "She is being remarkably gentle." They say at once.
"How... how is this gentle? I can't actually see uh... Invisi-Babe?" He turns to Trainwreck for confirmation, who is promptly slapped in the back of his head by Aspirant.
"Jess" The white armoured hero corrects him. They pointedly don't use the name 'Fleur', as that would rather give much more away than anyone would like.
"Right... uh... I can't even see Jess but I'm pretty sure I'd be dead if I had to deal with that." Oliver says, gesturing to your Master who has continued to drive Jess into a corner with her superior technique and strength.
"The boss can do a pretty good Panacea impression. Long as she don't cut nothing off you, it's fine." Trainwreck explains blithely.
"Not that such damage is common. She is an excellent teacher. Merely... extreme." Aspirant jumps in to defend.
"Time!" Danny yells from where he has been patiently staring at a stopwatch during the entire exercise. He wasn't really here by choice. Taylor had just pointedly decided to wait for him to arrive after work that day before beginning her training session. Something Trainwreck and Aspirant appreciate, because it meant they weren't woken up at seven in the morning - but that Danny did not. Of course, Taylor hadn't actually fought Danny, merely running him through an easy series of martial arts techniques, which had taken some of the sting out of it for the older man - who no doubt was terrified of experiencing exactly what Jess was right now.
"All right. I have a good idea of where you are with things. You wanna..?" Taylor says, wiping non-existent sweat from her brow. The ghostly woman seems too out of breath to actually respond, but she does walk over to her body and sink into it, vanishing just as her body's eyes snap open.
"Ugh. Going from out of breath to not is terrible. I am never doing this again." She says as she stands up on wobbly feet. Danny, noticing this, quickly steps over to support her.
"It... does show results eventually..." He offers weakly.
"It's cute that you think you have a choice." Trainwreck chimes in.
"Thank you, Danny," Jess says, pointedly ignoring Trainwreck. "I'm going to go sit down until this is done. My head hurts." She grouses, shooting Taylor a grumpy look. Even still, Taylor has a sense of contentment rolling off of her at the look - because if she's annoyed at least she's not sad.
'I'm gonna take Wreck and Aspirant somewhere else for a second okay? Can you distract Ollie?' She asks you silently.
'I should know enough to spar with him. What's happening?' You ask curiously.
'Gonna give em Aura. Wreck refuses to wear a helmet for some reason, so it feels prudent.' She grouses.
'But Oliver isn't?' You ask curiously.
'I've known Oliver for less than a week. No, I'm not going to hand him a free brute power, thanks.' She points out blithely.
That's fair you suppose.
'Anyway, I'm going to go find Parian at her shop and bring her back.' She continues.
'Sure.' You acknowledge.
So saying, you appear in front of your newest teammate, ghost viewing talisman firmly stuck to your chest and smile.
"Come on, it's me and you next." You say, even as Taylor gestures Trainwreck and Aspirant out of the room. Danny and Jess take this as their excuse to leave, and quickly scuttle off to... wherever Danny goes when he's hiding from training. Probably his office. There aren't a lot of rooms with places to sit in them yet.
"So..." He says to you as you square up with Long Memory, his hands coming up into an easy boxing stance.
"How do we...?" He asks curiously, trailing off. You consider it for a moment. Trying to determine what you know about Olliver really.
Then you remember all the glances your Master shot him throughout the day.
"Dodge!" You yell, rushing at him. And if anyone asks you, you can just point to your Master's training methods. Nothing suspicious about it at all really.
Really.
Sunday, February 6th, 2011
PRT Headquarters, Brockton Bay
As it turns out, your average Parahuman isn't actually allowed to just 'visit' people the PRT has under lock and key.
In that same vein, however, when your Master explains it as wanting to examine the side effects of one of her powers, they were much more accomodating. Possibly because they want to know as much as possible about Taylor's abilities. If a recording of the conversation you're about to have isn't in the Director's hands within minutes of you leaving, you'll eat your own shoes.
Regardless, your Master was eventually allowed access, along with a small squad of PRT troopers the reinforce the ones that typically watch the prison - the security in which has been significantly improved since becoming the only effective means of holding Parahumans in the city.
"...Night?" Taylor asks as she approaches the cell. You notice Shadow Stalker - Predator you guess - sitting in an adjacent cell, staring at her as she does so. Not that your Master deigns to so much as acknowledge her presence.
"...Yes." The woman in the cell responds, her voice coming through a speaker panel near on it's outside. Despite having been presumably trapped in an endless expanse of impossible to process energy for several days, she seems fairly... not insane, which is something. She is also sitting perfectly still on her bed, facing the wall to your left. You would describe the stillness as uncanny, but in Night's case it almost seems peaceful. At ease, in some way.
"I wanted to see if there were any side effects. I- didn't actually intend to hold you for that long." Taylor says diplomatically. You can tell that she doesn't really feel bad about holding the woman. She was a Nazi Assassin. Your Master isn't nearly so all loving as to let that go.
"Do not apologize." Night says waspishly, before her expression flattens out again.
"I am a monster, in a cage." She says plainly. "Your cage was merely more beautiful than most."
"Is that all? Nothing else?" Taylor asks quickly.
"I am self aware." Night responds simply.
"You and everyone else." Taylor answers in annoyance.
"No. You do not understand. Today is Sunday. On Sunday, I was conditioned to wake up at seven o'clock. I cooked breakfast. Always eggs, always sunny side up, two pinches of pepper, one piece of toast. My 'husband' would awaken twenty minutes later. When we met in the kitchen, he would lean on the fridge, comment on the weather, and gesture at breakfast. Then he would ask me if I had made coffee." She explains blandly, as though reciting from a script.
"That is 'Sunday'. That is every Sunday I have experienced, in my Adult life. I did not choose it. I simply did it." She finishes.
Your Master, slightly stunned by the admission, blinks once before coming to the obvious conclusion.
"You were brainwashed." She realizes quickly.
"Yes. That merely made me a Monster on a leash." Night notes, still not bothering to turn her head, remove her hands from her lap, or display anything you could even vaguely register as 'body language'.
"If that's the case, and you aren't Mastered anymore, couldn't you work with the PRT to-" Taylor points out, perking up. You suppose forgiving a Nazi Assassin, and forgiving an unwilling slave to Nazi's might be two entirely different things to her.
"No. I have choice. I choose to be imprisoned." She says instantly, her tone turning slightly enraged for a moment before falling back to its dull monotone.
Your Master continues to ask her questions for some time after that, but beyond that point, Night simply refuses to speak. She just sits there, nearly unblinking, until you eventually leave.
'Was that... helpful?' You ask carefully.
'Not at all.' She grouses.
Sunday, February 6th, 2011
Hebert Household, Brockton Bay
"Yo, Hebert the younger! How's tricks?" Mouse Protector greets your Master as you appear in the living room of your home.
"...Please put some pants on." Taylor says in annoyance, pointedly ignoring the greeting, and the pantsless woman sitting on her couch with the television on.
"Why? We're all ladies here. Unless that's your bag. I don't judge." Mouse says easily.
"Excuse me miss." You say sheepishly as you appear in the room with your Master. "But I also live here, so-"
"Yeah, but you don't count. Weren't you a buxom blond like two weeks ago?" Mouse dismisses you instantly.
'She's like a female Trainwreck.' You note in horror, even as you opt to vanish once more from sight in embarrassment.
'...Yeah, I guess she kind of is, isn't she?' Taylor replies in dawning horror herself.
"Aw is he shy? That's adorable! Hey, you eat yet?" Mouse asks with a snicker, gesturing to your Master with a beer bottle.
"...No?" Taylor says carefully, obviously unsure of how to deal with this woman. If it were Trainwreck, she would be dishing it out as good as she got it - over time your Master has assimilated enough of the big Tinker's vocabulary to be able to fire off insults and non-sequiturs just as well as he can. But Mouse is... well she's a stranger. And that kind of behaviour isn't normal or appropriate with strangers.
Not that this appears to actually stop Mouse from doing so.
"Cool. I was poking around your kitchen earlier. You've got a bunch of stuff that's about to go bad. You ever have college food?" She asks, hopping up from her seat.
"...No?" Taylor repeats herself, slightly distressed as Mouse spins her around and leads her into the kitchen.
"Oh man. You gotta appreciate it while your young. Once you get older you have to run for hours to work this crap off. Unless you have some kind of bullshit brute power that keeps you looking crisp." She says, eyeing your Master and chugging the rest of her beer before depositing it on the counter to begin rummaging around in the cupboards above the sink.
"Let's see, pasta, soy sauce, whatever the hell this is..." She begins to explain, handing the items off to your Master as she withdraws them.
"Uh... looks like, dried peppers," Taylor notes, eventually giving up on manually juggling everything being thrown at her and just using Onmyoudo to make it all float in front of her.
"Awesome, those fry super good." Mouse croons, leaving her exploration of the cupboards to dip into the fridge and repeat the process.
"What exactly are you making?" Taylor asks faintly.
"I dunno. And it's what we are making. Come on, the apprenticeship starts outside the job." She jokes, coming out with an armful of food stuffs.
"You... don't know?" Taylor says incredulously.
"Yeah, it's college food. Were just gonna fry all this bullshit at once and eat what comes out." Mouse says cheerfully.
Taylor looks dubiously between the stacks of unhealthy foods and Mouse Protector's clearly toned stomach in obvious doubt and confusion.
"Yeah, I've got one of those bullshit brute powers. Just a little though. This Mouse still has to work for a living after all." She says with a wink, dropping all of her ill-gotten gains on the table in the kitchen and then beginning to carefully pick through them.
The entire rest of the evening is surreal, as Mouse proceeds to alternate between giving somehow perfectly valid advice in the least acceptable way, and distracting your Master with her colourful banter enough that it never even occurs to her to actually walk away from the entire mess.
Eventually, the pair end up eating something that might technically count as food, while surrounded by the mess of their aborted attempt at 'cooking' and laughing at how silly it all is.
Which is how Danny and Jess find them when they eventually both get home - Danny just to drop Jess off.
Somehow, he was much less pleased with the mess. Even if he did look oddly touched when he walked in to see it at first.
But only at first.