Current Energy: 2

Current Training:

Magic Resistance (7/10)

Thursday, February 24th, 2011

City Limits, Canberra

[Taylor Hebert/Nexus]

Deathadder down, CD-5. Unicorn III down, CD-5. Electrocutioner down, CD-5. Jumpshot deceased, CD-5.

She bit her lip hard as the sudden influx of downed capes arrived, causing her to pause for half a second in a combination of annoyance and shame. Beneath her, the man she had been lifting a hunk of broken building off of shifted, taking that exact moment to switch from begging her to free him to trying to stab her in the leg with a needle of some kind. She wasn't particularly concerned by the needle - between her various enhancements, she highly doubted it would even be able to break her skin - but she wasn't stupid enough to let the thing just hit her either. Especially not when this was actually the third such time a random victim had attempted it.

With an almost automatic gesture that she had to work down from being murderous to merely incapacitating, she used her free hand to slap the mans wrist away from herself, breaking it instantly and causing the needle to fall to the ground. She frowned at the stupefied that flashed across his face, followed immediately by him blacking out.

"Again?" Emmy asked her, having been standing guard behind her, mostly keeping the Simurgh in his line of sight at all times.

"Yeah." She responded glumly, doing her utmost not to turn to look at the Simurgh fighting in the distance.

It had been over an hour since she had started clearing the outskirts of the city. There wasn't honestly much damage here. The first twenty minutes had largely consisted of her team checking the insides of buildings to see if anyone needed help evacuating. It had been so mundane that they had let their guard drop, somewhat. They were all still tense, but by the time they had travelled through a good portion of the city limits the feeling of 'we don't need to be here' was prevalent among the Oathbound. It wasn't that they didn't want to help. It was just that no help was necessary. The Simurgh wasn't like Behemoth, or Leviathan. She didn't do nearly as much widespread damage to the city she attacked as the other two. Most of the destruction she wrought on that front was a direct result of the fighting near her - which meant that so far away from her, there was basically nothing to do.

So they had split up, staying close enough that they qualified as being in the same area, but spread enough that they could clear a zone faster than if they had been together in a mob.

And that was when things had gotten weird. Because only shortly after they had split up, she had found someone who looked like the victim of a car crash. Then someone nearby fell from a building. On and on it went. She hadn't paused in her suddenly very necessary rescue efforts since. And with every person she rescued, every moment she spent not fighting the Simurgh -

Deathadder deceased, CD-5. Bearitone deceased, CD-5.

She was forced to listen to more and more people die.

Glaring down at the unconscious man in front of her, she pushed down her irritation. The Endbringers had been around almost as long as Capes had really existed. People took them into account the same way they did hurricanes and tropical storms. They simply were. She had to believe that her addition to the fight - while helpful - probably wouldn't be the difference between winning or not. She had to.

So she clapped her hands in front of herself, suffusing the Simurgh's latest victim with healing chi - and then cleaved a Gap open to throw him through - one that inevitably led back to one of the holding areas for such people.

Free of anybody obviously in need of her help for a moment, she was able to really look at the city she was in for the first time. With exception for the damaged balcony that she had been lifting, the residential area she was in was almost picturesque. The roads looked well maintained, none of the street signs were faded, damaged, or covered in graffiti. Homes looked loved and full of life. The entire area felt... nice, for lack of a better word. Nicer than any area of Brockton Bay she could easily think of at least. Which was saying something since Canberra was now actively undergoing an Endbringer attack. It was almost kind of ludicrous to have how bad Brockton was shoved in her face like this.

Sighing, she crouched low before jumping straight up as high as she could. To the north was the Simurgh - the storm of debris and inevitable barrage of blasts from the nearby capes continuing to grow as the battle raged on. An obvious and direct path of destruction was made through the city as the winged monster moved about, like the Endbringer was trying to recreate the Nazca Lines using destroyed urban development. Much to Taylor's secret annoyance, that path was very obviously moving away and to the left of her, depriving her of even that paltry excuse to get involved in the fighting.

Continuing on with her original purpose for this leap, she quickly glancing around the area near her, searching out her team. To her surprise, while she found them, she noticed that they were actually quite a bit further away from her than she had expected. The tiny speck she took to be Trainwreck was an entire quadrant and a half away from her by the system the communication system used to direct people.

'Emmy, when did we get so far away from everyone else?' She asked curiously as gravity took hold and she began to return to the ground.

'I was unaware we had grown very far apart. Perhaps the others simply grew distracted by their work.' Emmy replied, largely unconcerned. He wasn't apathetic towards what they were doing - he seemed very enthusiastic about it really - rather, he just wasn't threatened by it. As such, he kept most of his attention on the Simurgh while she rescued people, in order to ensure nothing unexpected happened.

She doubted it. She highly doubted it. There was a reason that 'everything is a Ziz plot' was so commonly bandied about by people. The Endbringer had cultivated a reputation for these kinds of mind games, using misdirection to get at people while they least expected it. She didn't believe in chance when it was much easier to blame the Ziz.

"Come on, let's catch up with everyone else." She decided aloud, turning towards where she had last seen Trainwreck and breaking out into a light jog. She wasn't going to ignore anyone she came across, but she wasn't going to delay either. Dutifully, Emmy quickly caught up to her, and they made their way partway through the small neighbourhood until Emmy paused, drawing his weapon to ward off an attack that never came.

Instead, a large hunk of burning building flew past overhead, slamming into the wall of a nearby building and quickly setting the entire thing ablaze.

Jackalope deceased, CD-5. Voodoo Daddy down, CD-5.

"She threw it this way on purpose." Emmy noted sharply, having already turned away from the adhoc meteorite.

Taylor didn't like the implication of that, but she couldn't refute it either. Quickly changing direction, she ran towards the building - it was, she noticed absently, a school - and quickly pushed the debris out of the way to find about what she expected.

The corpse of a cape. Presumably, Jackalope. Already, she could see the mans ghost rising from his body in a dazed state, glancing around as though unsure of itself. Her heart went out to him. Judging by his costume, he must have been relatively new to. Only having joined the fight because it was in his city. Without much thought, she withdrew her sword and tapped the bottom of its hilt against the ghost's chest, an action that caused the spectral entity to disintegrate in a burst of light.

She really hoped people she did that to actually went somewhere instead of just double dying or something. Nemesis was painfully evasive on the topic. Mostly because she thought it was a waste of time.

Stepping away from the corpse - and suppressing her urge to wretch over it - she glanced at the school building, which even now was already catching fire. She doubted there was anyone left inside of it - even Brockton had protocols for evacuating places like this when an Endbringer battle happened - but the possibility that someone had gotten left behind still existed. Dimly, in the back of her head, a long forgotten part of her even thought it was quite likely, dredging up unpleasant feelings of claustrophobia and fear that temporarily made the cloying smoke from the nearby flames feel like it was pressing in on her.

She quickly shook the thought off.