In the wake of the death of a constant, what changes?
Okay so heads up: Vicky is Kinda Pissed At Carol so she's saying things she doesn't mean (and some things she does mean) to get a reaction out of her and because she's pissed, so just be aware of that.
One other thing I want to clarify (from TV Tropes): Quarrel didn't inherit not because she's not a parahuman- she's both a parahuman and a deity, not entirely unlike Taylor- but because she killed both the current host of the Butcher and the Butcher Collective at the same time.
Taylor was almost tempted to compare Brockton Bay to New York City.
Not out of any sense of civic pride, no- not even the proudest and loudest of Brocktonites was willing to go up against the Big Apple on that one, with the potential exception of some of the cape fans or gang members who were touting the presence of one cape group or another as an advantage.
No, the temptation stemmed from the incredible recovery from the Endbringer attacks the cities in question survived.
Admittedly, in this case, it was almost entirely Taylor's contribution- say what you will about the effort and spirit that the capes she convinced to help devoted to helping rebuild her city, but by the nature of the fact that they'd come for an Endbringer battle, they were much better, on the whole, at destroying the traps that the Endbringers had left behind than actually rebuilding the (thankfully mostly abandoned) area of the city that the tall Endbringer had warped.
Taylor, along with Labyrinth and a Ward named Annex, were the most well-suited to putting some semblance of a building back up in the wake of the abomination that Quarrel had killed. Labyrinth admittedly wasn't necessarily adhering to the pre-existing architectural style and layouts, although given the condition of the mostly abandoned warehouses and other industrial buildings in the area, no one was going to kick up much of a fuss about that.
Once the first-wave handling of the immediate cleanup and casualty tallying, most of the capes left, with a smattering of non-locals hanging around to watch the lightshow (or, in the case of Myrddin and his posse, to keep Annex company) with the exception of the Thinker tent, which was still keeping Quarrel for something or other.
Even the medical tent had packed up, with Panacea being a major driving force behind the speed of clearing out the injured capes.
"How you feeling, kids?" asked Faultline from where she was standing right next to Labyrinth's focused form, welding mask not betraying the nerves she was clearly feeling (presumably some combination of the Endbringer and Labyrinth's spacey state).
"I'm here," said Annex, tiredness audible in his voice. "Probably not for long, though, I'm starting to get tapped."
"Don't worry about it if you do need to cut and run," said Taylor, three runes hovering above her upturned left hand and slowly turning in a cylinder, presenting a glinting golden othala-eiwaz-fehu each in turn as her outstretched right hand glowed with a spreading gold light that gradually repaired everything it clung to. "If push comes to shove, I could make the place… well, not perfect, but I could handle the rest of the damaged buildings, and given where we are it would probably be a fair sight better than it was before today." Taylor's voice turned sardonic at the end of her statement.
Aside from Victoria, who had an understanding of what, exactly, Taylor was capable of, the rest of the capes (and what few noncape bystanders had both the temerity and the even footing to keep up with the uneven terrain left behind by the interaction between preexisting rubble and Labyrinth overwriting parts of the street with things like old cobblestone, hunting trails, or well-worn wagon roads) gave her an incredulous look of one stripe or another.
After that, there was remarkably little talking, even taking into account when a panting Annex dragged himself back to Myrddin and the rest of the Chicago contingent and Labyrinth, whose path was becoming more irregular, was led away by a gently urging Faultline.
"Well," Taylor said, "they're here for a show, might as well give them one."
She rose into the air, trailed at first only by Glory Girl and then by the three runes, growing to almost be as tall as her.
"Hey, if this goes poorly, you might need to catch me," said Taylor, spinning slowly in place to face her girlfriend (and didn't that make something inside of her just melt a little bit, the idea that she had a significant other) as she said this.
"Whoa, what do you mean, 'if this goes badly'?" Vicky asked, eyes widening.
"Nothing that bad, just if, say, I overdo things, I might drop, and while I can handle a little bit of a fall, I'd rather not have to repair the building I land on again," answered Taylor, a wry smile playing across her lips.
Vicky just sighed fondly, shaking her head. "Only you, Taylor. Only you."
With that handled, Taylor closed her hand and breathed in.
Describing the way that it felt to draw in energy from the environment to power her own workings was kind of like trying to explain Star Wars to an eighth century Christian monk who'd spent the past month transcribing Beowolf: theoretically possible, if one were a Tolkienesque linguistic scholar, but otherwise it wasn't linguistically possible for Taylor to verbalize it to anyone (save Odin, since many of the terms she used to conceptualize it herself were pulled from his own understanding of the Runes, which was in a language never heard by mortal ears).
After a timeless instant, Taylor's lungs hit their full capacity, and as she exhaled, she shunted the energy she'd breathed in (for lack of a better English term) into the runes she was maintaining.
Hagalaz, the one against the small of her back and holding her in the air, she left alone, but one by one, each of the three runes that was slowly revolving around her increased in intensity- not physically, per se, but every observer knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that they were important.
Then, with no small amount of theatricality, Taylor snapped her fingers.
It was like reality blinked- one moment, Taylor was hovering over a mostly-ruined neighborhood, with patches of other worlds' buildings or landscapes overwritten in place of destroyed areas and some small spot patching, and the next, the massive runes had vanished and the ruined area of the neighborhood was completely restored.
She wobbled momentarily, and her eyelid drooped somewhat, but she shook herself briefly, then drew herself upright with kingly mien and turned to the gawkers. "The show is over! Go home!"
Slowly, the assembled crowd trickled away in dribs and drabs, until the only one remaining with Taylor was Vicky. While they were leaving, Taylor took the time to look over her handiwork, a smile making its way onto her face as she noticed the trail of various building types that Labyrinth left, breaking up the industrial chic (or lack thereof) of the neighborhood with earthy browns and tans.
"You okay?" asked the blonde, lifting Taylor's chin to make direct eye contact as she took the taller brunette by her shoulders.
"I'm not running at the game of my top-" Taylor stopped, blinked, and then sighed. "I'm not at the top of my game, but I should be fine to make it home."
Vicky didn't say anything, but her upraised eyebrow more than adequately conveyed her skepticism.
"No, really," said Taylor, breathing deeply for that extra little bit of energy before snapping her figures. As her armored hand made a surprisingly loud sound, two runes appeared hovering over her gauntlet, othala and raido both presenting outwards before they flashed into nonexistence. In their wake, they left a hexagonal panel of what looked to be amber, or perhaps tree sap, which showed Taylor's room briefly on the other side before it polished itself to a mirror's sheen. "I'll be fine getting home on my own," Taylor continued. "Besides, it's not like I'm planning on doing anything other than saying hi to Dad and then going to sleep."
Vicky continued scrutinizing Taylor for a moment longer, perhaps trying to find more exhaustion than Taylor could handle in her remaining eye, before sighing. "Stay safe, okay?"
"Of course." Taylor took Vicky's hand in hers and brought it up to her thin lips for a brief kiss before flying through the panel, which shattered in a spray of quickly-vanishing shards of something that resembled, at first glance, stained glass.
The blonde remained there for a moment, as if waiting for Taylor to return through the portal, then visibly set her jaw and flew off, the specter of her own home (and who was in it) looming in front of her.
Contrary to what Victoria was dreading, she was not confronted by Carol immediately upon entering the house. After a moment, she managed to convince herself that no, they wouldn't just let her get away with attempting to attack another cape less than ten minutes after the death of an Endbringer.
That lasted until she entered the kitchen for a glass of water, at which point Carol bit out a brief "Victoria."
"Carol," came Victoria's equally frosty reply. "I thought you were enjoying the hospitality of the PRT for your actions this morning. Dad asleep"
"That would be the thought, wouldn't it? No, fortunately enough, I was cleared to return home with Mark by Alexandria herself. She mentioned that my genuine belief that the apparently well-intentioned cape Volur was attempting to poach a member of a respected independent heroic organization, as is arguably the case for Vista, is enough to warrant my reaction, even if it was… excessive." Brandish didn't quite go so far as to sneer, but throughout her response, it was clear that she didn't exactly hold Victoria's girlfriend in high regard. Flashbang, of course, went unremarked on.
Victoria blinked, flabbergasted. "You- you can't possibly be blaming Taylor for having a Trigger event, which the Director responded to in such a way to cause Vista to have a Second Trigger?"
"No, of course not," said Brandish, raising her hands placatingly. "No, it's just that the way that PRT policies around Volur are, as it stands, that my reaction to your closeness to her is considered… warranted. Pursuant to that-"
"No! No way am I breaking up with her over some bullshit that Piggot set up because she's sore over how Vista ran away after learning that Piggot wanted to press-gang Taylor over her Trigger event!" Victoria's aura all but bloomed off of her, seeming to rattle the whole kitchen save for the stoic Brandish, who stood unmoved in the face of her emotions.
"For your own sake," said Brandish, tone the same calm, almost soothing motherly voice it had been before Victoria's voice rose, "I must advocate against your continued relationship. The PRT-"
"Oh, hang the damn PRT! They're an excuse and you know it!" Victoria was already bracing herself for what she suspected was coming from her mother. "What's the real reason you don't want me to date Taylor?"
"I just think that you would be better off to still be with Dean," said Brandish, slowly pushing herself up from her seat at the table and ambling over to the coffee machine, starting the pot with the press of a button. "It would be better for everyone involved-"
"What, were you counting too much on the contributions from the Stansfields to keep New Wave as afloat as it is?" asked Victoria, no small amount of dismissiveness in her voice. "Or is it that your pride can't take losing the social clout you get from your daughter being in the same circles as Max Anders and the Stansfields thanks to the boyfriend you contrived to set her up with?"
"Victoria Eileen Dallon," said Carol, some small amount of heat finally creeping into her voice. "I have let you be disrespectful before, but the insinuations you are making now are beyond the bounds of tolerance."
"So is attacking the woman who saved your daughter's life in Canberra and here during an Endbringer truce, but evidently everyone else is meant to tolerate it," Victoria shot back, rising a few inches into the air at the same time. "What's all this really about, Carol?"
A muscle in the Breaker's jaw visibly worked for a moment before she responded. "I'm trying to protect you."
"From what, heartbreak? You can't just wrap me up in bubble wrap and stick me on a shelf in your office forever! I have to grow on my own at some point, and just because you want me to live my life a certain way-"
"I can't protect you from the Empire like this!" Carol snapped, sparks of yellowish-orange light playing around her hands.
Victoria's head snapped up. "Is that what you told Fleur?"
Carol's eyes hardened. "Young lady, you will not speak to me in such a tone of voice! I will not be disrespected in my own home even by my own blood, and I refuse to allow you to endanger this family any more than you already have!"
Victoria blinked, shocked, and for a moment her aura billowed out into the room before she managed to drag it back in. "Any more than I already have? I'm not the one who decided to go public with our family's identities! I was a kid! Did you think about how easily the Empire or the Teeth would have killed me, or Crystal, or Amy, or Eric? No, Carol, out of the two of us, I'm not the one you should be pointing at when it comes to endangering our family."
Carol's face flushed red. "Get out of my house!"
For a moment, Victoria thought about taking the direct route, but then her more rational mind reasserted itself.
"Goodbye, Carol," she said, entirely too much to verbalize stuffed into the two words that she left behind.
After the door clicked shut, she rose into the air until the cold started nipping through her force field and costume, then screamed, one long, guttural sound that slowly petered out as she finally ran out of air.
That done, she dove down, splashing into the bay for long enough to wet her face, then emerged in a spray of glimmering droplets.
Now that the venting was out of the way (at least for now), she could focus on her next priority- finding a place to sleep tonight. In the long term, she'd prefer wherever it was that Amy had all but moved out to, but that whole neighborhood had been caught up in the Endbringer's Shaker effect, and she wasn't sure if her sister was looking for somewhere new or not.
In the meantime, though, she'd probably be able to crash on Taylor's couch- while Mr. Hebert reminded her of her own father in too many ways, she was sure that he'd at least let her stay the night.
Course charted, Victoria rose further into the air, then flew off towards her girlfriend's house.
And that's that!
I might need to pull back on update frequency some- not for Incense, that'll still be every four weeks or so, but I might not be posting as many things in between chapters of this fic. We'll see. At the very least I don't think the next four weeks are going to be too too impacted, I've got at least that much buffer, but after that things might slow down.
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That's about it, so read, review, enjoy, and have a nice day!
