A sword must be cared for between times of stress. People do not differ there.


Content Warning: the last section is from a Neo-Nazi perspective and contains racial slurs. You've been warned.

Surprise chapter! I felt bad for stiffing y'all last month (and my muse cooperated this week, hooray), so y'all get not one but two chapters this week. I might be able to squeeze out a third, but I'm also working on a project that's not fanfic this weekend so it probably won't be that soon.

So, I've been getting some reviews saying that this story is bad because of the queer themes/subtext, "unnecessary drama and revenge", and that I'm going to "burn [my] story to the ground", albeit with coarser language. My response: If you don't like my story, then don't read it, buddy. Don't show up, bitch at me, and keep showing up after. The only one making you read this is you.

On a totally separate note, you might notice that some of the runic spells, the ones based on the runes' meanings and not runic spelling, are a little bit (or a lot bit) of a stretch. Don't worry, it's all for a reason (well, two, but one of them is semi-legitimate and the other is just "the Runes cheat in favor of the Rúnatyr"): using the Runes like that is a very conceptual art, so it relies on the caster's mental associations. For example, I associate lightning with electricity and might be able to use sowilo to power an electrical device, while other people might not because they've got different mental associations. Also, I'm going to slide at least one kenning in there because it's kind of a staple of the Norse people's language.


The rest of the day was relatively uneventful, with the exception of Sophia's and Emma's glares during classes, and Taylor was very much glad to leave the school once she was done. As much personal progress as she had made in standing up for herself (as well as getting the recording from Gladly, which was something she'd have to get to Mr. Truth as soon as possible), she still felt drained.

"Is it normal," asked Taylor, quietly, "to be so tired after doing something like this?"

Odin nodded. "Aye, lass. Emotions take their toll, and so do breaking your habits. You dealt with both today, and you should be proud of yourself for doing so."

Taylor's link to the Administrator also pulsed pride at her, even as her eye teared up. "Thank you."

A feeling of partnership pulsed its way down Taylor's link with the Administrator while Odin nodded. "Anytime, lass."

Taylor wrapped the spirit of the king in a powerful hug, then spun off and rushed for her closet and tore the door open.

As it turned out, that was literal, as she yanked the screws holding the hinges to the jamb out of the wall, a clump of drywall and wood at the end of each of the slightly warped screws.

"Oh," said Taylor.

Odin just laughed, the weighty atmosphere of the moment broken. "Not to worry, lass, the Runes can fix this. Bor knows I've done so many times, raising Thor."

"I- well, I suppose that makes sense," said Taylor, eyes going distant as she let herself sink into the figurative grasp of the Runes. Then, her eyes snapped back into focus and a trio of runes burned in the air as she pressed the door back into the jamb, one after the other after the other, ehwaz to laguz to isa.

The first rune focused the effect, targeting the both jamb and the scraps hanging from the screws. The next turned both fluid and malleable, allowing them to flow back into an arrangement that resembled the original, while the last returned it to a solid state and secured the door to its place once again.

Odin nodded approvingly. "Well done, lass. Not my preferred method, but your ship will sail ye home as well as mine."

Taylor's eyebrows rose. "Never heard that one before. Old Norse special?" she asked, proceeding into her closet to retrieve her notebook on magical theory.

At the same time, she set her bugs to drag her phone over and connect it with the ancient desktop she'd convinced her father to let her use for runic enchanting.

It was both more and less complex than using the Runes to directly enforce her Will upon the world. It was more complex in that it required more careful analysis on the multiple meanings of the Runic characters and also the way in which they interacted with each other (which she could ignore when invoked directly in much the same way that the written form "read" was used for both present and past tense), not to mention that the effects of written use of the Runes tended to require longer strings of the mystical script to achieve meaningful, lasting results, but also less complicated because she had more time to work through the implications of the combinations and she also didn't have to directly supply the energy for the effect she wanted.

Still, she had lucked into a near-perfect combination for enhancing a computer. By simply directly writing the word "speed" in runes once onto the CPU, she had brought it up to par with a modern computer and then some, thanks to the unique interactions between sowilo meaning thunderbolt (which made it vastly more efficient), peorth allowing her to better attune it to her thought processes to make it almost respond to what she did before she did it, the pair of ehwaz runes allowing the CPU to operate as if it were four CPUs slaved together, and dagaz allowing it to draw energy directly from sunlight. After solving the overheating issues with multiple isa runes on the computer's fan and the memory issues with ansuz runes on both the RAM and the hard disk, the machine would perform on the level of some of the better Tinkertech computers out there (software and external issues, like data limitations on her internet connection, notwithstanding), if she was being generous with her assessment. It wasn't nearly at the level of the armor she was probably summoning from somewhere, but in her defense, that was more an issue of experience than anything else.

Take that, planned obsolescence!

Anyways, she used the efforts of her bugs to upload the recording of Gladly's… odd confession… to DeadDrop, a file sharing solution primarily run by the people behind PHO, and then sent the link in an email to Mr. Truth for him to use in the Winslow case.

She took a moment to give thanks, mentally, for the fact that New Hampshire law allowed audio recordings with one party consent in places without a reasonable expectation of privacy, such as school classrooms and hallways, which had almost certainly performed great service in favor of her court case.

That done, she moved to her white board to work on her understanding of the mystic power at her fingertips. After all, the Teeth were a major, immediate threat, and she'd feel much better if she had the chance to prepare counters to at least some of them in advance.


Taylor's eyes snapped open, some primordial part of her brain, convinced that she wasn't alone in her room, jolting her from sleep.

She rolled over in her bed and flicked on her bedside lamp, blinking blearily to see two dark-garbed figures in her room standing in front of her open window. "What the fuck!"

Immediately, she poured herself into her bugs, sending them to her dad's room to make the shape of two runes, those being naudiz and peorth. "Dad, call the cops, home invasion, two people in my room," came her voice from the hastily invoked spell. To his credit, her father only blinked blearily a few times before the meaning of what he heard sank in and he scrambled for the landline near his bed, showing his maritime roots with the intensity of the swearing that came from his mouth.

"Shit, she's awake," came a familiar, feminine voice from one of them.

"What do we do?" asked the other, also familiar, feminine voice.

"We brought the goddamn chloroform for a reason, Survivor! Use that shit!" At that, the newly-named Survivor pulled a bottle out of the messenger bag at her side and started unscrewing the cap.

"Stay back," said Taylor, reaching under her pillow and, after pulsing sowilo and gebo to pull out a "thunder-spear", or in more modern terms, a stun gun. "I'm armed!"

Technically speaking, it wasn't a proper stun gun. While it may have looked to be, Taylor could tell that it was actually a thin layer of magic disguising the appearance of a blunt-bladed dagger (that something in the back of her head, where the rest of Odin's memories sat waiting for her to be ready for them, insisted was used for teaching young Æsir warriors how to fight against and with a dagger), enchanted with the power of a thunderstorm, of sufficient quality to make her efforts on her computer look like a preschooler's efforts at finger painting in comparison.

Regardless, it served the same purpose: nonlethal incapacitation of one's foes.

Survivor laughed. "And what are you going to do with that, Taylor? You know you can't stop both of us with that, even if by some miracle you do manage to hit one of us."

"Not like a mouse like you ever could," said the other person, and everything snapped into place.

"Not satisfied with one attempted murder, Sophia? Feeling the need to put another head on Shadow Stalker's rap sheet?" asked Taylor, teeth bared.

Both girls reeled back. "What?" asked Emma, scared, as the bottle fell onto Taylor's desk. "How do you know that?"

"You move like her," said Taylor. "Your gait, how you fight, you don't change it out of costume." True, but misleading- she'd put the connection of Sophia's movements together after Vista had tipped her off to Sophia's identity.

"Shit," said Sophia. "We can't afford to-"

"You can't afford to kill me," said Taylor. "We're bringing suit against Winslow and the PRT. If I die, my lawyer starts talking about cover-ups and political assassinations. That's the kind of thing that gets people Birdcaged. People like Teacher."

"They're not gonna care about a nobody like you, Hebert. Not if there's nobody to ask." Emma looked at Sophia askance as the taller girl unsheathed a knife and lunged at Taylor, blade first.

The hovering barrier conjured by the hovering algiz rune over Taylor's outstretched hand stymied Sophia, in both her normal form and her Breaker state. Out of the corner of her eye, Taylor noted Emma backing up and pressing herself against the wall, but she put her former friend out of her mind in favor of the more immediate threat.

"Get out of my house. Last warning." Taylor dropped the dagger and it faded away, power enough to freeze a fire Jotun building in the hand formerly holding the weapon.

"Make me," snarled Shadow Stalker, moving to try to circumvent Taylor's barrier.

"Don't say I didn't warn you," said Taylor, unleashing the power gathering in an overcharged isa rune. The attack nailed Shadow Stalker dead on, and then the rune started flickering in time with her Breaker form.

After a moment, the drain on Taylor's stamina became noticeable, and she released the rune to maintain the barrier as Sophia lunged at her.

The dark-clothed Breaker promptly turned and dove out the wall, abandoning the fight, and Taylor allowed the shield to flake away into motes of light after almost thirty seconds of waiting.

As the fight ended, Odin faded back out of… wherever he went when he wasn't around her, and nodded once. Then, he turned his piercing blue eye onto Emma and Taylor did so a moment later, one milky-blind eye and one dark green locking onto Emma's eyes (since Taylor didn't wear her eyepatch to bed, the ruined eye was visible). "Now then," said the once-King of Asgard. "What to do about her."


Victor Gladly was having a distinctly unusual day, he mused as he walked away from Winslow.

Most of the day was wholly mundane, an ordinary day in the public education system (inasmuch as any day at Winslow High could be called ordinary relative to the American public education system), with the good, upstanding students of the school having to undergo the predations of the vile criminals and other undesirables while he and his fellow teachers did their best to protect them from their alleged peers.

His third period class, on the other hand, was definitively not normal, and it all centered around one person: Taylor Hebert.

As much as willful ignorance would have helped with his ability to sleep at night while working at that school, Gladly was not blessed with such ignorance. He saw everything that went on in his classroom, his observational skills finely honed from his time working with his brother to direct the course of the Empire and its righteous crusade in his role as Clausewitz, strategist and recruiter of the Empire.

He was well aware that Taylor Hebert was being bullied by Sophia Hess and her race traitor friends. He was also well aware of how he couldn't intercede against the school's precious Ward or her little gang out of respect for the plan to discredit them and through them the Protectorate, not for someone outside the figurative club. The plan was worth more than that, as much as the necessity pained him.

He was also aware that Taylor Hebert was… changing, of late. More confident in her walk, less furtive in her darting glances, that sort of thing.

Today was when it came to a head.

Madison Clements had stolen the girl's paper, as she had dozens of times before, and presented it as heer own. This was nothing new.

What was new was that Hebert had laid a trap, and Clements had walked right into it.

The text of the paper turned in was the entirety of the "Lorem ipsum" placeholder text, prefaced by "This paper stolen from Taylor Hebert". Given this blatant evidence, he had no choice but to enforce the school's plagiarism policy, even if only superficially thanks to the plan's guidance.

All of this pointed to one thing: Taylor Hebert was, in fact, a parahuman.

As such, he'd decided to approach the girl. Nothing too overt, not at first, but perhaps in time, he'd be able to turn her to a more… amenable persuasion.

Except… apparently he'd misread the girl.

When he'd made his overtures, something about her blocked his power, at least partially, so instead of the professional oratory he was used to crafting for Kaiser, his verbal maneuvering seemed to almost curdle in his mouth, leaving his silver tongue slow and heavy and the plan that he had spent so much of his time in service to out of his mental reach.

Furthermore, she'd deduced his allegiances, if not his actual position within the Empire, based on some slips of the tongue he'd made, not to mention the anger she'd revealed at his ham-fisted attempt to draw her in.

On the plus side, he'd found the crater she'd left in the thick oak of the desk he'd convinced Rune to help him disguise as and replace the school-issue teacher's desk, so he had confirmation of both a Brute rating and a Trump effect for the girl.

Yes, she would make quite the recruit. They might have to exert some leverage with her father, or perhaps even send her to Gesellschaft to make her more… compliant… but in the end, they would prevail, with God willing of course.

Furthermore, she would be a wonderful tool to topple the Protectorate and PRT, only requiring the slightest adjustments to the plan

As if he had timed it on purpose, instead of just allowing his power to idly direct his thought process, he arrived at his brother's house. Slipping into the alcove right next to the front door to don his preferred domino mask and cap, to make it clear that this was cape business, he straightened his button-down shirt and nodded to himself before knocking.

The woman in an eye patch who opened the door didn't so much as bat an eyelash at seeing her brother-in-law in his cape identity at her house, for he'd cultivated a bit of a habit of doing so for unannounced strategy meetings. Kaiser may have been the leader of Allfather's legacy, after all, but the man wasn't half the strategist or even tactician that he and his brother was, let alone the pair of them cooperating.

"Othala, good evening. I take it Victor is still at work?"

She nodded, letting him in. "He should be home within the hour, if this week's pattern holds true." She paused for a moment, then: "So, what new consideration for the Empire's future do you have to discuss with my husband tonight?"

"If we play our cards right? A new recruit for the Empire, one who could potentially stand up to the slants' dragon."

Othala smiled. "That sounds like a great addition to the Empire."

"Precisely." Clausewitz smiled. "God willing, we might be able to take the city back from the slants once the Teeth have left. For the glory of the Empire!"

"For the glory of the Empire," echoed Othala, already getting up. "I'll make sure you two have dinner ready when you're done."

"Thank you very much," replied the Empire's strategist, grabbing a whiteboard out of a closet and setting it up to be prepared when Victor returned. "Now, how would I go about recruiting a Trump capable of dampening my power…"


And that's that!

For those curious, Carl von Clausewitz (the man who Gladly's cape persona was named after) was a Prussian military leader who had opinions on the psychological and political aspects of warfare.

I'm not sure what I'm going to do with Emma. I really don't like the way that things went down with her in canon, so… there's a couple of ways things can go down, and I'll leave the decision to the mercy of my readers. She can be a Master victim like in A Hummingbird Feather (except not the Fallen's fault this time), in which case I have like a paragraph of stuff I'd retcon back in, she could have actually drank Sophia's kool-aid and been trying to make Taylor strong though a really fucked up perspective, or we could go with the interpretation of canon that goes "saw Taylor as something holding her back, got angry, and never let go". Up to y'all. (If you have alternative suggestions, I'm all ears, figuratively speaking.

That's about it, so read, review, enjoy, and have a nice day!