Taylor comes face to face with the Teeth, for a given value of face to face.
This month has been… not great. Things have cooled down some, and my muse finally let me get back to this fic.
The first sign of things going wrong on Taylor's way home was Oni Lee being hurled into the road hard enough to explode into a cloud of ash that very inconveniently decided to make itself at home on the windshield of the truck.
Turning her attention to her bugs, she sensed three groups of people, all shooting at each other (and splattering her bugs).
One group was disorganized and covered in spikes and… well, suffice it to say that Taylor had no doubt that they were the Teeth, since while she'd been young when they were driven from the city by the Nine, the threat of the Butcher returning to the Bay was one of the things she was concerned about even with her powers.
The second group was also disorganized and lacking in obvious identifying themes that she could make out with her bugs, but the presence of more Oni Lee clones appearing to take bullets for them made it obvious that they were the ABB.
The third was only two people atop a building, one with a tall recurve bow in her hands and standing protectively over the slumped-over form of the other, smaller person, which was not a good sign.
As the truck rolled to a stop, Taylor tore her seat belt off and all but leapt out of the car, already calling up the runes to conjure her armor and landing in a classic three-point landing.
"T-Taylor? What are you doing?" There was a tremor of fear in his voice.
"I can see Vista and Quarrel in a three-way fight over there," said Taylor. "If nothing else, I need to get them out."
He sighed. "You're not going to stop for anything I say, are you?"
She shook her head. "I can't, dad. Not if I want to know that I did all I could."
"Then stay safe, Taylor. I'll get to the Docks, it's probably safer than home right now." Taylor nodded, and then closed the door.
"Stay safe, dad," she said, holding her right hand out in front of her, palm up, to summon a Raidō rune. With that, she blurred into motion, relying on her sense of where her bugs were to avoid the fighting and make her way to Quarrel and Vista safely.
When Taylor ran up the side of the building and emerged on top, Quarrel sent a shaft her way without even looking, relying on her power to nail the shot. If not for Taylor's hand blurring up to catch the arrow, guided by the rune's magic, it would have gone through her helmet's eyehole and probably taken her one remaining eye, but as it was, she was safe.
"Watch your allies," said Taylor crossly, flicking the arrow back as the support of the concept of a Journey faded at having reached the destination.
Without looking, Quarrel snapped her right hand out, caught the arrow, then re-nocked it and planted it in a Teeth gangster's foot, leaving him easy prey for Oni Lee to slit his throat. "Noted. Can you do anything for Vista? She took a fall after the damn Oni bastard tried to slit her throat and knocked herself out. Also, what am I supposed to call you in costume?"
"Probably?" Taylor frowned, trying to remember which runes that she'd discussed with Odin were useful for healing. "And , uh…" Mentally, she sent a plea for suggestions to Odin.
"Volur. Plural form of volva, for a… female diviner is close, in this language, but the concept doesn't carry over quite that well," said Odin.
Sending a mental pulse of gratitude to him, Taylor said "You can call me Volur."
Taylor knelt over Vista, Ansuz flickering to life on the forehead of her helm for insight into the girl's condition, and then sighed. "No major damage, just a minor concussion. I should be able to heal this, if you want to escape with-"
"No, I'm finishing what I started. Butcher's a fucking bastard, he won't stop until one of us is dead, but he ain't showed yet. Probably slugging it out with Lung, the ass."
"...right." Taylor remembered when the Protectorate had beaten off Lung a few years back, but she was skeptical that any one cape not on the Triumvirate, even the Butcher, could do it single-handedly without a whole lot of luck. Then, she focused, and the right rune bubbled up out of her memory. "There might be a slight lightshow," she said.
The rune that appeared over Vista, which resembled a large B made out of two triangles touching at one corner, was approximately the size of Quarrel's bow, which itself was tall enough to come almost up to the ex-Teeth cape's bust (which Taylor had to almost force herself not to focus on once the rune burned out, since in her position it was almost directly at her eye level).
A moment later, Vista blinked her eyes open blearily. "Taylor? Whassgoinon?"
"Teeth ambush," said Quarrel firmly. "Some dude in a demon mask showed up and helped distract 'em, and it sounds like your local dragon's fighting the Butcher, but we're still dealing with things." She cocked her head. "Hey, Volur. You got anything good at range?"
"I have a trick or two," said Taylor, drawing together a swarm of every bug the Administrator was willing to give her within her radius. Then, she almost smacked herself as she remembered a simpler solution than just "biblical plague".
She focused, visualizing the effect she wanted as she got to her feet, then spread her hands as if to throw a volleyball.
The rune that appeared over the assembled gangsters would have reminded them of lessons on integrals in calculus classes, had they had any.
Of course, it didn't last long, vanishing in a sprinkle of golden embers as Taylor staggered, visibly drained, but it did its job, putting a significant portion of both sides' unpowered forces to sleep, as well as staggering the two Teeth capes present.
Once they'd regained their balance, the two capes turned to glare at Taylor. One flicked a hand, sending a spray of what looked like glass shards up to shatter against Taylor's armor, doing nothing more than sending her staggering back. The other clenched her fists as red liquid gathered along her arms and legs, solidifying into claws on her hands and feet to allow her to begin to climb the building.
Vista shoved out with both hands, and one eye-searing moment later, the climbing cape was abruptly across the street while still on the building, and Quarrel spared a shaft for the woman (which knocked her off the building, landing awkwardly next to her compatriot) as she sent the majority of her ammunition at the other cape, who was forced to pull her odd shards of not-glass back to defend herself, maintaining a constant motion of the things to thwart Quarrel's power and chew through her arrows.
"Anything else?" snapped Quarrel, snapping off a shot that curved around to hit the one that wasn't covered in blood- or at least it would have had it not been shredded by the shards of not-glass.
"Sowilo," said Odin. "Either the lightning punches through the villain's shields or the flash and bang will stun them."
Taylor nodded. "Let's try… this!" She threw her hand forwards as if throwing a javelin, and a rune that appeared like a capital sigma which had its top and bottom portions pulled apart appeared in front of her. "Close your eyes and cover your ears," she hissed.
The air took on an almost greasy quality as Taylor staggered, drained by the effort of multiple effects larger than she'd tried before, and then-
The air split with a sound like an artillery cannon going off, and everything went white.
The ringing in Taylor's ears cleared up faster than she expected, and she blinked her eye open to see Quarrel pinning the Shaker to the street through her shoes, then swerving an arrow to smack her in the face and knock her down, at which point arrows seemed to almost erupt from her costume, leaving her flat on her back with almost no mobility. Vista, meanwhile, was hurling bricks with her power ar the blood-covered one, a pile of the things on top of the building they were on shrinking slowly but surely as she wore her target down.
Or at least, she was, until Oni Lee appeared behind them, knife flashing towards Quarrel. The archer cape lunged backwards, arrow held backwards in her hand to take him in the chest and destroy the clone before he could give her more than a scratch.
"Fuck," said Quarrel, eyes darting around to try and track the ABB teleporter and failing. "Alright, kiddies, time to tag out. I can't nail the Oni reliably when he's jumping around and I don't feel comfortable giving him free reign at either of you, so we'll leave him to fight Hemorrhagia and Vex."
"Sounds like a plan," said Taylor, still a little short of breath from the relatively large showing of raw power she'd put on. "Gimme a sec and I can speed our escape along."
"Nifty," said Quarrel, stabbing another Oni Lee clone in the throat with the arrow still clenched in her fist and then sending the arrow towards the presumable Hemorrhagia covered in red liquid and repeating the process, draining her remaining quiver a little too quickly for comfort. "Vista, get us a path out of here so that when Volur here is ready, we can book it but good."
With these orders, Taylor saw Odin's esteem of the other cape rise a few notches, an assessment that she shared.
"Got it," the diminutive Shaker replied, turning away from the two active Teeth capes and waving her hands. In a matter of seconds, a building two streets away abruptly closed the distance to their building, and immediately after that another two buildings (both further than the first) followed suit, forming a pseudo-bridge for them to cross away from battle.
Now that Taylor had had a moment to breathe, she brought in the swarm she'd been gathering for the whole fight and hurled it at the Teeth capes, quite handily disrupting their efforts to regroup and (in Vex's case) disrupting line of sight and preventing attacks. Then, she flicked a Raidō rune into the air above her party of three, letting the concept of a journey wrap around all three of them and speed their steps. "We're good, let's get going," she said, putting deed to word and jogging across the nearly adjacent rooftops (albeit not without some discomfort from the eye-searing effects of Vista's power).
The other two capes followed suit, evidently more used to the distortions by the way they didn't even flinch when crossing the boundaries between rooftops.
Once they made it to the last rooftop in the line, Vista relaxed her grip on space's metaphorical balls and the other buildings were abruptly no longer next to theirs, leaving them about a mile away from the site of the fight.
"Alright," said Taylor, sitting down on a conveniently located brick chimney, "so why are the Teeth back in the Bay? Present company excluded, of course. I already know why you're here."
"Uh… yeah, so I didn't leave under the best of terms, per se, since I got pissy when Hemorrhagia tried to stop me from coming to help Vista. She never liked me to start with, so I bet this is her convincing the Butcher that I betrayed them or some shit. I dunno, why d'you ask?" Quarrel finally slung her bow on her back, grimacing at her nearly empty quiver.
Taylor sighed gustily. "Great. So now we have to stay out of reach of both the Protectorate and the Teeth, both of which have great justifiable reason to hunt us down and/or come after us in our sleep."
"But the Unwritten Rules would-" begun Vista.
"Unwritten Rules ain't gonna stop the Butcher, nothing stops them, and since the PRT's already been sniffing around your personal identity, Volur, I wouldn't put too much trust in 'em there, or at least not the identity protection aspect."
Taylor's head fell into her hands. "I should have stayed in bed this morning," she groused.
"Lung-sama, the kyūjūtsushi and her allies have escaped from our confrontation with them and the Teeth. It appears to be a fresh trigger, the kyūjūtsushi herself, and also Vista, of the Wards here in Brockton Bay." Oni Lee's voice was precise, crisp, and nearly emotionless.
"And the Teeth?" growled Lung, already suspecting the answer given the timing of the Butcher driving him back.
"I attempted to capitalize on the obfuscation that the fresh trigger left behind and eliminate their capes, but Hemorrhagia and Vex were too canny for me to defeat, and when the Butcher arrived, the men retreated. I engaged the Teeth and managed to wound Reaver before being pushed back."
"Very well. And our losses?"
"Minor. The unpowered Teeth were unskilled rabble, and aside from at Vex and Hemorrhagia's hands, none of our men died."
"That is still unacceptable. We will need greater firepower to return this insult as the Teeth deserve." Lung went silent in contemplation for a moment. "I believe I have a solution. Tell me, what do you know about the woman known as the Cornell Bomber?"
"Not much beyond her nationality, Lung-sama. I believe she used some sort of exotic explosive effects to threaten the campus, but the exact mechanism eludes me. She may be a Tinker, or a Nuker."
"I see." More silent contemplation. "I believe that she will suit our needs admirably. Make preparations for a trip to New York. This woman's power will greatly strengthen our reach and potentially even remove the Butcher from the board without killing her, given the portion of the campus that is frozen in time."
"It will be done, Lung-sama." Oni Lee turned to leave the room.
"It might even allow for the restoration of your previous mindset," mused Lung quietly, once the other man had gone.
Oni Lee had once been a cunning man, a powerful advisor and an equal to Lung himself, back when he held hope of driving Kaiser and his ilk from the city. Now, the man's powers had taken their toll on him, stealing his initiative and keen tactical wit save for occasional flashes of genius. If the woman was a Nuker, she would be incapable of restoring Oni Lee, but if not… in that case, Tinkers could do anything they put their minds to, if given ample resources and a link to their specialty.
Even if she failed… well, Cranial's services were always for hire.
Lung sighed, putting thoughts of the man who had once been his most faithful friend (and recovering that man) out of his mind. He had a gang war to fight, and musing on maybes wouldn't serve him and his men. No, only actual tactical thought would win this war.
Lung sat alone in his room and plotted the downfall of the Teeth, and while that might not have been frightening to most, it was only because they underestimated the cape who had once fought Leviathan to a standstill.
The Teeth would fall before him, as all challengers before them and all yet to come save for the beast who sank Kyushu, its ilk, and the woman in the hat. Lung would not be so humiliated again.
This he swore, on the spirits of his ancestors and the blood he had shed for his city: The Teeth would burn.
And that's about it!
FYI, the thing that Oni Lee calls Quarrel is just Japanese for archer, as far as I'm aware (Google is limited in its ability to help, and it's all I had to work with).
I'm taking a little bit of liberty with the thing Bakuda did at Cornell, since iirc she didn't actually set off a time stop bomb there.
That's it, so read, review, enjoy, and have a nice day!
