Current Training: Half Devil Race Change (7/20) - (9/20)
Current Energy: 17
Sunday, March 13th, 2011
The Heap, Brockton Bay
Taylor Hebert
Was she being a brat?
Taylor glanced around herself. She eyed the extremely complicated array of magical sigils, paper talismans, focusing devices, runic script, and other such thaumaturgical nonsense that was layered in and around the basement room where she resurrected people.
She turned her attention to the large ivory hand situated at the center of the extremely complicated arrangement of objects and magical foci around her. She eyed the wrist, where she could see inside the thing. It had come as… well not a surprise given how inhuman the Endbringers were, but still… it had been unsettling to realize that - upon close inspection - that the entire limb was just an entangled mesh of small feathered wings, perfectly placed to create the optical illusion of a hand.
A very large, immaculate hand.
Taylor tried very hard not to think too much about how an inhuman monster's idea of perfection was very easily mirrored in her own hand if looked at closely.
Of course, diverting her thoughts away from that admittedly dysphoria inducing aspect of her power reminded her of her original thought.
Was she being a brat?
Yes she had a routine… and well… yes she had a certain preference for maintaining that routine. She understood - intellectually - that what she considered 'training' was a pretty vague concept. She had 'trained' while meditating, while getting ad hoc therapy from a panda bear, and yes, while doing a fair amount of actual physical training.
But she had never not trained at all. Not since getting her power. Not since her life had gotten so much better.
And really, that was probably the reason it bothered her so much. Training was… it was representative of a better life for her. She wouldn't describe herself as 'obsessed' with it but well…
She just liked it okay? She thought Emmy got that. Emmy was the one who'd harangued and harassed her day after day to do the training!
In fact, in retrospect, this was totally Emmys fault! She couldn't be held accountable for this!
Which was the exact logic that had gotten her thinking.
Obviously the best way to ensure she had time to keep up with her habit- hobby- necessary personal maintenance, was to deal with Valefor. They had shown her pictures of the guy in his PRT dossier and he was… well the best way she could describe him in light of everything else going on was as a creepy little stalker boy.
She had tried to use a tracking spell to find him and ended up drawing a blank. Well. Not a 'blank' but rather, an empty warehouse. She suspected that wherever Valefor was, he had been at least partially involved in Uber and Leets shift towards ultra violence - because the only place she could conceive of to hide from her was a pocket dimension somewhere.
Valefor himself, she didn't really know well enough to find, nor did she have a focus item to follow him with. But Sophia Hess? Taylor could have magically locked on to Sophia Hess while blindfolded.
And yet… she couldn't.
She couldn't even slash her way into the place because she had no context for it. If she tried again she'd probably just end up back where she'd found Uber and Leet the first time.
So she had done something that she was reasonably certain everyone in the area would tell her was a bad idea.
She was going to make the Simurgh into a Shikigami.
Then she was going to send Valefor to his god directly - because she didn't have the time or energy for the mind games.
Taylor didn't consider herself a brutish or overly violent person. She didn't believe that 'dumb muscle' was really a thing.
But she had definitely spent many, many hours on the phone with Vicky complaining about how much she preferred a fist fight to a battle of wits.
'This is fine. I'll have complete control over it if it goes all 'kill all humans' on me. I can just.. order it to sit still so I can kill it. This is fine. Totally.' She convinced herself as she took her position at the northernmost point of the ritual circle and began to pump power into the runes, scriptures, and other objects of power linked to the spot she was standing in.
She had stopped doing resurrections for the PRT in their dingy metal room in the basement. It wasn't that she had a problem with dingy metal rooms. It was that the setup over at the PRT was innately not hers. It was an inefficient combination of whatever Armsmaster thought would be helpful and whatever she could scrounge up with a days preparation.
This room - which was, she would admit freely, also a dingy metal room in a basement - had as many optimizations, upgrades, fixes, and changes as she could feasibly cram into the space. She had better control here. She could put more power into her workings.
And she was protected when she decided to do something stupid.
Like, convert all of her various power sources into more magic to slam into the formation.
Valefor thought the Simurgh was a god? Fine. She'd show him a god.
"What is best in life?" She muttered to herself, even as her considerable stamina began to drain under the tremendous weight of what she was trying to accomplish. She always thought that quote from the old movie her Dad loved was a bit… well misogynistic, but as she accrued stupid enemies who wouldn't leave her alone, she was starting to warm up to it.
…in a totally heroic sense, of course.
Slowly, ever so slowly, the hand in the center of the working began to glow and lift into the air. The pull on her resources increased, faster and faster, until she was leaning heavily on her sword and panting for breath.
Just a bit more and-
"Heyyyyy… I need a favor." Emmy's new, lackadaisical tone pierced her focus.
"R-right now!?" She barked out as the glowing limb began to twist and warp into the shape of a well proportioned woman.
"...yes?" He responded. She concentrated balefully on the brand new feminine figure that had spawned before her as she waited for him to elaborate - too focused on the sudden realization that she had to be very careful with the next few seconds lest she end up fighting a Simurgh that she herself had empowered.
Which would totally be Emmy's fault, and definitely wouldn't be kind of fun.
Definitely.
At length, the woman who had appeared across from her - fully clothed for once, which was rare for her in a Shikigami - examined her for a second, then placed one unnaturally pale hand on an exposed hip and made an 'I'll wait' gesture with her other hand.
Taylor squinted at the weird cutouts in the woman's pants that made this possible - seemingly designed to highlight said hips - then slowly drew her eyes up the rest of her. Pale skin that was only just this side of human, and hair that was just a slightly darker shade of white swished about as the Shikigami tilted its head at her and smirked, shifting its 'I'll wait' motion to a 'hurry up' one.
"Well?!" She quickly shot to Emmy as her eyes lit on the single sword at the woman's side.
"Right. Could you maybe shoot me a tracking spell to that Trollo guy? He's a dickhead criminal right?" Emmy sent to her.
She barely even thought about it before her hand quickly flitted through the gesture for the spell, sending it off to her partner.
Then she closed down the link and stared at what she had wrought.
Was she certain the Simurgh's scream could travel through her link to Emmy? No. Would she take that risk? Also no.
"Look at you, taking a perfectly good genocidal monster and giving it an endocrine system." The woman finally said, when it was obvious her communication with Emmy had ceased.
Not that Taylor knew how she knew that…
"I guessed. It's really obvious when you do your little psychic conversation thing. I also guessed that you were wondering how I knew that. It's called cold reading." The woman supplied, doing a slow turn to examine the room around her as she spoke in an absent minded tone.
Taylor opened her mouth to respond to that but had to take an abrupt step backwards instead when the chatty Shikigami abruptly disappeared from where she was standing, only to reappear when she bounced violently off the barrier surrounding the ritual area. A cascade of blue light rippled across the invisible dome, and the pale woman ended up blinking dazedly on the floor where she had ended up.
"So you could guess what I was thinking but not that I was smart enough to have precautions for if you got aggressive?" Taylor asked, perhaps a touch smugly.
She could still remember fighting the Simurgh and she was unashamed to say that she held perhaps a touch more animosity to this new being than was appropriate. Even though she knew that the completely new mode of existence for her had probably drastically changed the Simurgh's personality.
The creature pouted - pouted! - at her.
"Look, I have memories of omniscience but now have to function using only these two stupid eyes. Besides, I wasn't going to attack you. I just thought appearing behind you would make this funnier." She grumbled.
"You thought aggressively teleporting at me would make things… 'funnier'?" Taylor asked.
"Yeah, and you thought turning an Endbringer's toenail into a person was a great way to blow off steam. Get off your high horse, Mom." She spat, quickly rising to her feet.
Taylor couldn't help but flinch slightly at the title. She grasped that in many ways she was a Mother to what few Shikigami she made that remained with her - and weren't just an ad hoc way to resurrect someone.
She was also fifteen, and therefore, found the idea of being a mother at all deeply uncomfortable. Not just because of the connotations behind being a teenage mother, which she could easily ignore by remembering that she was technically one of the bourgeoisie now. No, it was the fact that she felt woefully unprepared for it, and in truth, was very happy to foist that particular responsibility on Jess.
Which got her thinking about Jess and her not really relationship with her Dad, which she also didn't want to think about which-
Well.
Unfortunately, the Shikigami seemed to detect the obvious chain reaction of thoughts the single word had caused, because a wide leering smile spread across her face as she watched Taylor briefly work through the train of thought.
"Oh, I can tell we're going to get along great." She said slowly and malefically.
"I'm going to pretend you didn't say that, because I'm already getting a headache from talking to you. Let's get down to business here. I forbid you from knowingly causing direct or indirect harm, be it physical or psychological, through any action or influence of your own without my express permission." Taylor began, quickly rattling off the first chunk of the legalese she planned on inflicting on her new Shikigami.
"Hey wai- I'm not a demon Crowley, you can't just hit me with a finely worded- " She blurted out rushing forward and bouncing off the dome again.
"You will, whenever possible, act in the defense of the innocent as defined by me, and confirm with me the details of such a designation should it ever come into question or be anything less than blatantly obvious." Taylor continued.
"You know I'm not like, innately evil right? You don't need to-"
"In my absence, you will defer to Emmy, then the rest of the Oathbound, then my Father, then any member of the Dockworkers Association in descending order of seniority. In the absence of anyone to confirm your actions, due to our deaths or other unforeseen circumstances, you will approach the nearest Protectorate Headquarters and work with them to determine your course of action." Taylor finished.
"...I feel like you're being unfairly strict with me here…" The Shikigami pointed out sourly.
"I feel like your first sentence included the word 'genocide'. Don't be a baby. Literally none of those restrictions stop you from getting married or doing anything else you want. You just can't hurt people." Taylor said with a roll of her eyes.
"Yes, well, you haven't even asked me my name yet." The pale woman pouted.
Taylor mentally ran back over the conversation and determined that, no, no she hadn't.
"Sorry. What-"
"Simone. I like Simone. Also, you should probably know, I'm really not the Simurgh. I'm literally the equivalent of its toenail. It's not actually dead." Simone stated with a mix of amusement and concern on her face.
"She's not? But the body-" Taylor blurted out in dismay.
"It's not, and pretty much it's entire body is vestigial. Its 'brain' or 'soul' or whatever you want to call it, is in one of the smaller wings. The rest is a very sexy decoy." She purred, drawing a hand down over her own body for emphasis.
"Gross. Don't do that. Also, it?" Taylor asked, her brows drawing down in thought.
"That thing was not, nor has it ever been, a human of any kind. It's closer to a… what would your Father call it… a terminator than anything else. A very complex machine." She explained with a matter of factness to her tone.
"So… should I be worried about it wanting revenge or..? Actually where the hell do Endbringers come from since we're talking about it." Taylor pressed.
"How should I know? I'm just the right hand of a decoy. I have vague memories of things my statuesque progenitor did, enough to be able to fake being a well socialized person, but I am, at the end of the day, the right hand of a decoy." She responded easily.
"Very helpful…" Taylor murmured. She shuffled the information around in her head for a minute before making a note to contact Piggot about it, then got back down to business.
Simone seemed to grasp what she was thinking about, because for once she opted not to make a clever remark.
Eventually Taylor decided that she had done her due diligence, and could safely drop the barrier containing the woman - and did so.
Only to be met with another teleporting leap from Simone, who appeared in front of her to sweep her up into a spinning hug that - for just the briefest of seconds - Taylor thought was the opening to a grappling maneuver.
She was almost kind of disappointed that it wasn't.
"Wonderful! Since we're all friendly now, I feel like you should be made aware of your obligations, Mother. Obviously, I will require a room, a wardrobe, a civilian identity - I would obviously prefer the Hebert family name like my sisters -" The Shikigami began to rattle off loudly.
Taylor sighed. She was already beginning to regret this course of action. Still, she reminded herself that she had done this in order to get at that creepy little stalker, and-
Actually, if this wasn't the Simurgh then she hadn't even achieved that.
"Damnit." She muttered, as the pale woman began to drag her through the Heap to Parian's Boutique.
Sunday, March 13th, 2011
The Heap, Brockton Bay
Multiversal Emulator
"Okay but, you get that I'm way cooler than Trainwreck right?" You ask the small child you nearly ran over as you guide him through the Heap towards a free room that you are pretty sure didn't exist until exactly when you needed it.
"Nuh-uh. You have a- um, my Aunty says you have a 'branding problem'. She says you should go back to being the hot guy with the big sword." The child explained to him with a look of concentration on his face as he tried to remember the exact words used.
You stare at him wordlessly for a moment. Silently hefting your own very large sword and posing with your hand on your chin - and he shoots you a mystified look in response.
"You- I- you know what? I'm not arguing with a child. You aren't old enough to drink, your opinion doesn't matter." You grouse at him.
"Didn't you tell us like, a few hours ago that you're a few months old tops?" Aisha points out with barely suppressed mirth from behind you.
"Yeah but I'm emulating a grown man. Totally just lied to you to get what I wanted." You say in response, blowing a raspberry at the unimpressed teen.
"You're kinda cool I guess. Like my Uncle." The kid - who's name you still hadn't gotten - says slowly, shifting awkwardly around as he walks.
"See? I-" You start to say triumphantly.
"This one time, he fought another one of the guys who lives under the docks with a rock so I could have this cool t-shirt that washed up on the beach. That was kinda cool." He says.
"Hey, look at that. On a scale from one to ten you merit a solid 'bum fight' out of ten as this guy." Aisha chortles right back at you.
"This guy literally killed god where he's from!" You yell in annoyance.
"Okay Nietzsche." Someone says sarcastically in response, and it takes you a solid fifteen seconds to realize it was Mem who said it.
"My own sister." You whisper in horror, which the taciturn girl merely blushes at without actually changing expressions.
"Actually, I still don't get how all of you are related. Like, you're Taylors power, and she made you, and you made her and-" Dinah asks curiously, pointing at you, Mem, and Mun in turn.
"What are the chances you figure it out if we don't explain it?" Mun asks smugly.
"...16.8%" Dinah says slowly, squinting at the bird girl.
"You know the rules. It's not life threatening, so I get to keep that to mess with you." Mun responds archly.
"You just made that up just now!" Dinah complains.
"All in favor of messing with Number Girl-"
"I'm not calling myself that!"
"-say 'Aye'" Mun calls out.
Three hands instantly go up, much to Dinah's chagrin.
"Et tu Mem?" She asks dejectedly.
The cane Shikigami shrugs and lowers her hand with the others.
"I owe her several favors. I just wanted to discharge one." She explains.
"That's Mem-speak for 'I'm a goddamn pudding fiend and I keep stealing hers at lunch'" Mun chimes in.
Mem blushes again.
"So uh… I take it you're like… homeless? I'm no good with kids, but Trainwreck-" You start to ask slowly.
"I'm not! My Mom and Dad are just busy! Miss Nimue told me I should just wait with her but I got tired of waiting and wanted to see if I could find my house, but there was this really big dog that chased me and then I ran into these guys with guns who wanted to know who I was and then-" The child slumps slightly.
Everyone present stares at him now as they process his disjointed story.
"Jesus Christ kid." You opine for everyone there, eyeing the odd purple streak in his hair.
"It's okay! I just asked myself what Trainwreck would do." He responds, perking back up again.
"Oh god damnit." You hear Aisha mutter.
"Uh-huh… and uh… what would Trainwreck do?" You ask slowly in response.
"I punched the dog in the nose real hard, and I punched the guys with guns in the knees real hard so they couldn't chase me! Miss Nimue says people with guns don't die if you hurt them so I shouldn't worry about it if they start screaming!" He says proudly.
"He can never meet Trainwreck." You hear the girls whispering behind you. It's very quiet. Enough so that you would assume only someone with enhanced hearing should be able to catch it.
And yet…
"You promised!" The child yells, whirling around instantly.
Well, at least you won't be the only one suffering.
"Well hello there. You new here? I know the grounds pretty well if you wanna go on a private walk around the-" You say the second you step into the kitchen to find a tall, leggy, blonde woman standing around in short-shorts and a pink t-shirt.
"I'm technically your sister, but if you really want to go for a… private… trip…" She responds with a certain malicious glee.
You immediately pivot on one foot to examine your Master, who is sitting at the kitchen table with a large mug of… something… nearby, rubbing her temples in exasperation.
"What's for dinner?" You ask, pretending the last ten seconds never happened. Taylor lazily lifts the mug next to her into the air in answer, then downs the entire thing in a single gulp.
"Is that… beer?" You ask incredulously.
"It's root beer. I just wanted a way to demonstrate my misery." She explains, leaning forward until her forehead bangs against the table.
"Oh Mother dearest, don't be so grumpy. You'll get gray hairs." The woman pipes up with a smirk.
"Hey, how come you never make boy Shikigami?" You ask idly, turning towards her to examine without any of your Emulation's built in lust filtering through.
"Because she has no actual control over it." The woman instantly rattles off.
"I totally do!" Taylor snaps, bolting upright.
"Then why am I like this if it bothers you so much?" The woman counters, making a pose before returning to a lazy slouch.
"Hey, hi. Elder projection here. Who the hell are you?" You add in when it becomes obvious you are being ignored. The unknown woman blinks once then turns towards you, shooting a curious glance at your Master as though wondering why you don't already know.
Which… is a fair point given you can communicate mentally from any distance.
"Emmy, Simone. Simone, Emmy. She's the Simurgh's thumb or whatever." Taylor said tiredly.
"Right hand." Simone sniped back.
"Oh hey. I actually follow the logic on this one. We doing a 'where is your god now' thing with this or what?" You ask.
Simone points at you and smiles.
"He gets it." She says with genuine warmth in her tone.
"Why doesn't it concern you that she's part of the Simurgh." Taylor grinds out through her teeth. She's not actually that annoyed right now, you can tell. She's only mildly annoyed, and is overexaggerating that annoyance in order to play along with Simone.
She is still sort of annoyed though.
So you shrug.
"This guy killed God or… whatever existed before God. Or… reality? I dunno, I try not to think too hard about it. Endbringers rate pretty low on the power scale for the hell hole he's from." You explain lazily.
"Note to self. Never visit this emulation. Ever." Taylor mutters.
"Yeah but hear me out. Tons of cool fights and zero accountability for them." You point out.
"...okay, maybe visit this emulation." She concedes.
"I feel as though I should be insulted, Brother dearest." Simone offers, pulling a chair from the table to sit nearby to watch you.
You point a finger at her.
"Don't do that. It's creepy." You say quickly.
"I tried that. She won't listen." Taylor says from off to your side. You think about it for a second. Then you shrug again.
"Eh. Probably won't bother the next guy. I'm over it. We ready to head home?" You ask, earning a pout and a relieved sigh from your Master, who very quickly opens a Gap and steps through it.
"Later sis." You say lackadaisically, as you step through the Gap after your Master.
You try not to be worried by the catlike look of interest and annoyance you get from the once Endbringer at your complete lack of concern for how dangerous she probably is.
You don't really succeed though.
Monday, March 14th, 2011
Hebert Household, Brockton Bay
"Up and at em! Let's go let's go let's go!" You bellow, banging a pair of pots together as loudly as you can over your Master's head where she is presently sleeping.
She, of course, can see what you are doing while she sleeps - so this doesn't surprise her. But it does annoy her, which is becoming a fairly standard reaction to this emulation at this point.
"You know, since you can survive being eviscerated, I'm starting to think maybe I should do it more often in retaliation for stuff like this." Taylor says tiredly, not bothering to actually get up or move from her position beyond the effort it takes to swing her arm around and point Nemesis at you.
"Okay but, hear me out, training." You croon at her. The sword arm currently trained on you droops slightly but then firms back up.
"You're not just screwing with me like yesterday right?" Taylor asks, finally rolling over to look you in the face.
"Nope. We got all the fixins. A truck, a mission, aaaaaand I told Danny he had to call you in sick today for national security reasons." You say with a crooked grin.
Your Master blinks at you owlishly.
"...what national security reasons?" She asks suspiciously.
"Oh there isn't one. I just wanted to see if he'd believe it." You answer with a shrug.
Beautiful gesture, the shrug. The one stop shop for 'I don't care, I don't know, and you can't prove I did it'.
"Why did you lie to my dad?" She asks with a frown.
"Well, it's gonna take a while to drive to Boston so-" You explain slowly.
"Why do we need to drive to Boston?" Your Master cuts you off, her tone going dangerous.
"...because driving is part of the training?" You put forth. She squints at you some more, but ultimately relents, rolling back over to go back to sleep.
"Also Simone is here, and she's making breakfast." You inform her, causing her to bolt upright in bed to glare at you.
"Why didn't you open with that? Do you screw with me as this guy for fun?" She laments, rapidly scrambling over to get dressed.
"I don't see the problem. She just said she wanted to meet her sisters." You say in confusion.
"That's the whole problem! I bet she'll have them paying bums to fight each other for fun within a week!" Taylor hisses at you.
"I feel like you might be exaggerating how malicious she is…" You sigh as your Master sprints past you with a dress misaligned across her torso, rapidly tugging her arms into the sleeves as she goes.
You roll your eyes and phase straight down through the floor and into the kitchen instead of chasing after her, and arrive at the amusing sight of your Master frozen on the stairs down, staring in confusion at the scene before her.
"So you just brush it? Have you considered braids? I feel like this would look good in a braid." Simone hums pleasantly, sitting on the couch in your living room behind Mem, whose hair she is playing with while fiddling with a host of hair care supplies she shouldn't have access to.
"Braids require continuous maintenance. Mun can brush my hair every morning in as little as ten minutes." Mem explains, leaning into the physical contact.
"If you brush it too much it damages the hair - you'll get split ends." Simone explains casually, tilting her head towards Mun who was sitting nearby and watching the entire process curiously.
"Now you… I think your hair is closer to a bird's feathers than anything else… we'll have to look up a way to handle that. It's much too lustrous to just ignore."
"How do you know that?" Mun asks suspiciously.
"Hmm?" Simone hums as she continues to fiddle with Mem's hair.
"The feather thing. I didn't know that," the raven haired girl elaborates.
"Ah. Can you keep a secret?" Simone asks with a twinkle in her eyes.
"Definitely not." Mem states at the same time as Mun says "Totally."
"I know lots of useless information. The Simurgh didn't just mind control people. She planned around them. The amount of useless trivia I hold in this head of mine is quite vast. Also not very useful. I usually only remember things as they become relevant. Show me a Cape and I'll probably know their real name - but I wouldn't even think of it until I saw them." Simone explains with a shrug.
"For instance!" She says loudly, causing your Master to jolt where she is - badly - spying on them.
"I wanted to make sure I was here for this." She explains, reaching over to the remote to turn the television on just in time for a news report to begin playing.
"In other news, several young Parahumans known to frequent the Heap have made their debut. Though their team name is unknown, they are assumed to be Nexus' answer to the Wards program." The anchor was saying, just as the screen shifted to show a slideshow of images for each of the girls from the previous night.
Along with 'Cape Names' stenciled in at the bottom of the image.
"Oh fuck off." Mun complains, as the news anchor goes on to talk about the abilities of 'Number Girl', 'Bird Brain', 'Wizard Girl', and 'Sword Gal' - or at least, the ones you could easily figure out from the blurry cellphone footage that had caught them yelling at each other while fighting.
"I wanted to be called Long Memory." Mem complains blandly.
"I wanted to be called Benevolent Murdering Princess!" Mun complains. Simone raises an eyebrow at that but snickers nonetheless.
"No way Mother dearest would have let that one fly, little Sister." She says, leaning her head back on the couch to look straight at your Master where she is situated on the stairs behind her.
"There are waffles in the kitchen. The homemade kind, not that frozen garbage you eat for some reason." She says with a smirk.
"Do you just, only have two facial expressions?" Taylor grumbles, caught in the act.
"I have a few more, but those are for when you're older."
"""Gross.""" All three girls say at once.