[Update chapter - 8/Jan/2022]
Taylor rolled left as Valka's greatsword sunk into the metal floor of the beached ship. Taylor attempted to swing her own sword at her new teacher, with far less grace than what was being used against herself. As punishment for such a telegraphed attack, Valka flipped over the sword, using her own as a pivot point. Next, the far older woman used the sword handle as a vertical swinging pole and used it to plant both of her booted feet into Taylor's chest with force, sending the girl crashing into a metal wall and denting it considerably.
When Taylor had regained her bearings, having adapted to take less damage due to her teacher's lessons, she saw that Valka had wedged her own sword out of the ground and was now stalking over to Taylor's prone form.
"C'mon, get up," Valka ordered. "You won't learn anything laying down there."
Taylor obliged, using her sword to assist with her getting up. But once she was up, Valka wasted no time attempting to run her through. Dodging and parrying, she had worked up some skills in it the day before when Valka was training her in hand-to-hand.
To say the least, Taylor was surprised to have learned the basics of several martial art forms in a single day.
"You are doing well, Taylor." Valka complemented. "Now dodge left,"
Taylor did as she was told.
And dodge right into Valka's swinging blade, rending her upper from her lower.
Darkness
Light
Movement
Darkness
Heat
Movement
Light
Warmth
Fire
FIRE
FIRE
F̴̞̪̉͋Ȉ̶̡̮R̸͚͂ͅE̵͖̅̉
Taylor shot up with a cough as she felt the crackling energy leave her body that brought her back to the land of the living.
"Need to work on your focus, Taylor. Why on this Earth would you listen to me tell you to dive into my sword?" Valka asked, giving her a hand up.
"I thought you were giving me advice," Taylor answered, rubbing her throbbing, fiery skull.
"And I might of. You need to be the one to figure out if it's actually advice or me just trying to trip you up." Valka leaned forward on her sword. "Not everyone is always going to give the answers that help you, or ones that are even truthful at all. You need to keep your head down to earth and figure this stuff out for yourself."
Taylor groaned, making Valka chuckle.
Taylor really didn't want to keep duelling Valka. But she could feel her body getting quicker.
- - - - - Lazarus - - - - -
"Are you sure this is… safe?" Danny asked as he watched his daughter and Valka in the Heberts' backyard.
"Safe? Oh, of course not. I mean, we're essentially playing an acrobatic Russian Roulette with localized black hole grenades." Valka replied, juggling another two grenades, catching one and tossing another to Taylor.
"I mean is it safe for me?" Danny asked, eyeing Taylor and betraying his words of who exactly he was worried about.
"You're going to be fine, Danny." Valka reaffirmed. "As I said, the black holes are localized and will only affect Taylor or myself."
"And you're sure that she can come back from black holes?" Danny continued to press for answers.
"Yes, yes. I've done it many times in the past. The real things are far trickier than these dinky little ones."
"Dad," Taylor said sternly, her focus still on the grenades. "I'm going to be fine. There's no need to worry."
Danny sighed. "Okay then sweetie, if you say-"
In some form of irony, Taylor's hands chose that exact moment to fumble a grenade catch and drop it. Without even time for a simple 'ah-oh', the device detonated and created a perfectly spherical black ball around Taylor. It lingered for a few seconds before it shrunk back down to its now inactive casing, taking a small patch of grass and the entirety of Taylor with it.
"TAYLOR!" Danny cried in dismay.
"Hey, hey. Give her a second." Valka told the man.
Sure enough, not five seconds later, arcs of electricity began appearing around the backyard until they became frequent and centralized enough to form a massive burst of light that deposited a flaming-skulled Taylor on the lawn.
"Damn it!" Taylor cursed as she hammered a fist on the lawn. "I almost had a new record!"
Valka own flaming skull giggled into an open hand. "It happens, Taylor. Learn from it, adjust, do better."
"Yeah, yeah okay. Is it okay if we take a break? I think Dad fainted."
- - - - - Lazarus - - - - -
"Taylor! You're falling behind!" Valka called back to her protégé.
"I'm… trying!" Taylor panted back, almost ready to collapse. Taylor had taken up running shortly after she had begun to be bullied, running a few miles each and every morning, if only to get away from the boys that had been goaded into chasing her.
But this? What Valka was putting her through?
P A I N.
Just, pain.
They had been sprinting around the abandoned trainyard, covering its entirety multiple times, for the past SEVEN HOURS WITHOUT STOPPING. Not even for water. At least four hours into the run, Taylor had begun to believe that the glammer trinket was beginning to fail in her exhaustion-fuelled deliria, sweating from places that even she didn't know she could sweat from.
"Okay," Valka spoke up, beginning to slow, "Think it's time to take a quick break."
"Oh, thank any god that is out there!" Taylor said as she literally collapsed on the grainy dirt. "I'd have started praying to the Endbringers soon if it meant that we could stop."
"Hmm." Valka hummed as Taylor could see her reaching for something out of the corner of her eye.
"Valka." She asked.
"Yes, Taylor?" She responded.
"What are you doing." She stated, not asked.
"Why nothing." She returned innocently. A little too innocently for Taylor's liking.
"Valka, I know yo..." Taylor just had enough time to flare her malaise and try to roll away quick enough and avoid the steel pole crunching through her enflamed, jawless skull.
She was not quick enough.
"Had a nice break?" Valka asked once Taylor had come back and was picking herself up.
"Fuck you," Taylor replied with a cough.
"That's fair." Valka shrugged.
I hindsight, Taylor really should have seen this coming. Oh, how she hated Valka whenever she did something like this. Which was often. Her borderline sadistic teacher would kill her at any chance they got, which Taylor shamefully admitted was many.
And yet, in spite of all of that, she could feel her body getting faster.
- - - - - Lazarus - - - - -
"So, any luck on the possible Winslow cape investigation?" Hannah asked Kate as the latter entered the Protectorate joint office and threw her grey and blue helmet carelessly aside and slumped onto a chair next to Hannah, the rest of her Battery costume thankfully staying on.
"Exhausting," Kate answered. "Weeks. 3. Weeks! And nothing more than a potential name. A name that not a single student could tell us anything about more than an 'oh yeah, she sucks'. It is exhausting."
"Have you…"
"Gone and questioned her yet? Nope! And want to know why? Because the Youth Guard somehow caught wind of the investigation!"
Hannah winced. "And they're not letting anyone anywhere near her without 'irrefutable evidence that she is, or is in contact with, a cape'?" She guessed.
"Got it in one." Kate sighed as she spun her chair around. "Why couldn't've Daisy of got this case? The Youth Guard loooove her."
Both women spared a moment to chuckle.
"You know she already has her hands full with the wards, despite how little she shows it." Hannah reminded.
"Remind me again why Collin thought that he'd be a good fit to run the wards?" Kate asked on a whim.
Hannah simply shrugged in return. "I've known Colin since he and I were in what passed as the wards in the early days, not once did I know him as anything but an unempathetic workaholic robot. Don't tell him I said that."
"Don't worry I won't," Kate promised. "Man, since when did we go from strong, stern women to fun gossip girls?"
"Probably since Daisy got transferred here. She rubs off on us all more than anyone would like to admit."
"Except my husband."
"Except Ethan," Hannah admitted.
"I really need to stop letting those two from hanging out. They cause an infinite loop of bad influence."
"You also need to get back to the Winslow case," Hannah said as she got out of her chair and drew up her American flag bandana. "Mainly because I'm not going to be here to entertain you any longer."
"Ugh, fine. Later Hannah."
"Later Kate."
- - - - - Lazarus - - - - -
Taylor grunted as she lifted the weights up and away from her body. It was easier to call it a 'weights' rather than a 'collection of heavy objects Valka continued to pile on top of her in attempts to make her stronger. Because really that was just a mouthful that nobody had time to say.
"Ready for another?" Valka asked from Taylor's left.
"Do I get a choice?" Taylor asked, flashing a cocky smile.
"Nope," Valka answered, returning her smile with a smirk of her own. Then, Valka ripped off another piece of metal out of a ship's hull, crumpled it into a rough sort-of cube, and tossed it on top of the rest of the ones Taylor was lifting.
Taylor's arms wobbled, and her eyes would have widened if she had any at the moment.
'Uh-oh.' Taylor thought.
Then her arms finally, at long last, gave out.
Taylor groaned as she came to. It was still annoying having to pick herself up whenever she revived, maybe Valka had a way to do it standing up.
"How much was I on?" Taylor asked Valka.
"Tad over three tonnes," Valka informed her. "I was counting." She added to Taylor's sceptical gaze.
Taylor had gotten used to Valka's training methods by now, getting killed at every mistake she made, and yet they still annoyed the heck out of the young Eternal.
And yet, she could feel her body getting stronger.
- - - - Lazarus - - - - -
"Heya T, what'cha doing there?" Valka asked as she flopped down on the Heberts' couch next to Taylor.
"Uh, not much?" Taylor admitted, not elaborating on what she just stuffed into the couch cushions.
"Well, that's nice. Hey, I see you're costume ideas are coming along pretty well." Valka complemented, suddenly having Taylor's notebook. Taylor damned her mentor for being this slick. "Oh hey, you're considering that NCT fabric I told you about."
"Well, yeah…" Taylor rubbed the back of her head. "it seemed like a good idea to have a self-repairing fabric if I was… going to get 'beat up' so much."
"Hm, hm. Hey, y'know that I have someone who makes the stuff temperature-resistant?" Valka asked, pointing out one of the more likely ways for her to die as a hero in Brockton Bay.
"Well, I guess that's a good idea?" Taylor shrugged. "I was more hung up on the detail of dying whilst not ruining my costume."
"And what about this?" Valka flipped to one of the pages, causing Taylor's eyes to widen a bit, realizing she hadn't meant to bring that one down. She quickly tried to nab the whole notebook from the older woman's fingers to little avail as Valka pulled it away and pushed Taylor away with a hand to the face. "So, a firefighter outfit? What gave you this idea?"
Taylor felt her face heat up under Valka's fingers.
"I, just, uh..." Taylor stammered for a reply that didn't embarrass herself. "It was something that I dreamt of..."
Taylor felt Valka's hand stiffen and become ridged before releasing her poor face. "We'll use this one then."
"Wh-what?!" Taylor exclaimed, surprised.
"You dreamt of it; it must mean something. My own outfit came to me in a dream, too." Valka clarified.
"Really?" Taylor asked.
Valka nodded. "It was actually similar to the outfit a good friend of mine once wore. Blutz 'N' Vega." Valka shook her head. "Anyway, doesn't matter. What does, is that the subconscious is a very powerful thing, and if your dream was compelling enough to make you record this design, then it means something." Valka gave Taylor a pointed look, "And dreams... well, don't ignore them. Learn from them, study them, follow them, but do not ignore them. Remember Taylor, you aren't human anymore."
Taylor nodded, feeling a little wired hearing those words, even after these few months of repetitively hearing them.
She didn't think she'd ever get used to not being human.